Quote

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

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
Accepting
Used
Nothing
Diminish
Accept

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
We are powerful because we have survived
Audre Lorde
Image
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
Audre Lorde
Image
Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
Audre Lorde
Image
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
Audre Lorde
Image
I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
Audre Lorde
Image
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
Image
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open. Love is a word another kind of open — As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside. Take my word for jewel in your open light.
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
But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.
Audre Lorde
Image
Without community, there is no liberation.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
Audre Lorde
Image
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
Audre Lorde
Image
I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.
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
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
Image
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
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
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
Audre Lorde
Image
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde