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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.

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
Often
Used
Misnamed
Women
Psychotic
Made
Erotic
Men
Trivial
Sensation
Sensations
Confused

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We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.
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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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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. . . .
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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 realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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Poetry is not a luxury.
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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.
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Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
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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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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
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You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements.
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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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Guilt is not a response to anger it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
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Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
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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 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.
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The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.
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Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
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I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
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