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For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak 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
Necessary
Language
Speak
Write
Truth
Writing
Scrutinize

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Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
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If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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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.
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Art is not living. It is the use of living.
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
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We are powerful because we have survived
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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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To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
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Your silence will not protect you.
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Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
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We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
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Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
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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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What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?
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I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
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I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.
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Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
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I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian. ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read.
Audre Lorde