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

Audre Lorde

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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

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For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
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There are no honest poems about dead women.
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I believe one of the hardest things you can do is conquer your fears, but if you have a goal, then it's your job to open up and let it be real no matter how scary it seems.
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Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
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I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
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. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
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Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
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All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
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Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.
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We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.
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There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.
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When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
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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.
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When you are a member of an out-group, and you challenge others with whom you share this outsider position to examine some aspect of their lives that distorts differences between you, then there can be a great deal of pain.
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
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Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
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And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.
Audre Lorde