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It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

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
Axiomatic
Detriment
Define
Defined
Use
Others

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When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.
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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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The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
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Poetry is not a luxury.
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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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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 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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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.
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We are powerful because we have survived
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Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideasl The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves--along with the renewed courage to try them out.
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The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
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We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
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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.
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
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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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All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
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We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
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Without community, there is no liberation.
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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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Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
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