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It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.

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
Life
Destiny
Sick
Mistake
Trappings
Society
Signs
Success
Repeat
White
Repeats
Black
Meaningful
America
Mistakes

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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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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 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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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
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Some words live in my throat breeding like adders. Others know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
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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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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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I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. . . .
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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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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Art is not living. It is the use of living.
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So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
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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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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
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I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.
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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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Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?
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