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When you are a member of an out-group, and you challenge others with whom you share this outsider position to examine some aspect of their lives that distorts differences between you, then there can be a great deal of pain.

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
Challenges
Challenge
Differences
Group
Share
Aspect
Pain
Members
Distorts
Lives
Groups
Outsider
Others
Deal
Examine
Great
Deals
Outsiders
Position
Member

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Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
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Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
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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.
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I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
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If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.
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Our visions begin with our desires.
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Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
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And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
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To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
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I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.
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There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
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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.
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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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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
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Poetry is not a luxury.
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I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
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I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.
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