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In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.

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
Recognition
Despair
Loving
Answer
Lies
Answers
Lying

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.
Audre Lorde
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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
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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
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Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
Audre Lorde
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
Audre Lorde
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To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
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Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
Audre Lorde
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You will never be able to defend your city while shouting.
Audre Lorde
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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
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One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
Audre Lorde
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When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
Audre Lorde
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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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I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde
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When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Audre Lorde
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Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.
Audre Lorde
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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?
Audre Lorde
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What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
Audre Lorde
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Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Audre Lorde
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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde