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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.
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
Giving
Poem
Poetry
Already
Name
Names
Felt
Birthed
Give
Formless
Ideas
Nameless
More quotes by Audre Lorde
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
Audre Lorde
If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.
Audre Lorde
The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .
Audre Lorde
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)
Audre Lorde
We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
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
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
Audre Lorde
I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.
Audre Lorde
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
Audre Lorde
I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.
Audre Lorde
Art is not living. It is the use of living.
Audre Lorde
Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Audre Lorde
Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
Audre Lorde
I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.
Audre Lorde
To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
Audre Lorde