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We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.

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
Easy
Sexual
Speak
Fundamental
Way
Fundamentals
Tantalizing
Think
Tend
Arousal
Thinking
Toward
Kinky
Life
Force
Erotic
Moving
Deepest
Living
Moves

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.
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The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
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Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
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pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
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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?
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And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
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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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It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
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Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
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If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.
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You are the one that you are looking for.
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As we come to know, accept, and explore our feelings, they will become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas-the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.
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Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
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I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.
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If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
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There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
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If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness we give up the future of our worlds. (From Poetry is Not a Luxury)
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
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Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
Audre Lorde