Quote

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

Audre Lorde

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Audre Lorde
Age: 58 †
Born: 1934
Born: February 18
Died: 1992
Died: November 17
Essayist
Feminist
Librarian
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Audre Geraldine Lorde
Evade
Succumb
Transcend
Deal
Deals
Pain
Important

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
Audre Lorde
Image
When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.
Audre Lorde
Image
One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
Audre Lorde
Image
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.
Audre Lorde
Image
We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.
Audre Lorde
Image
If you do not learn to hate you will never be lonely enough to love easily nor will you always be brave, although it does not grow any easier. Do not pretend to convenient beliefs, even when they are righteous you will never be able to defend your city while shouting.
Audre Lorde
Image
When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.
Audre Lorde
Image
Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.
Audre Lorde
Image
I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
Audre Lorde
Image
It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.
Audre Lorde
Image
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?
Audre Lorde
Image
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
Audre Lorde
Image
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
Audre Lorde
Image
Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
Audre Lorde
Image
Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
Audre Lorde
Image
Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
Audre Lorde
Image
Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?
Audre Lorde
Image
It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
Audre Lorde
Image
The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
Audre Lorde
Image
So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde