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I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

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
Liars
Buried
Refuse
Alive
Words
Bleak
Heroism

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
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Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
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Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
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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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You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Audre Lorde
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
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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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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.
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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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Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings... This is how new visions begin.
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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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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.
Audre Lorde
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You are the one that you are looking for.
Audre Lorde
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Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Audre Lorde
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We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
Audre Lorde
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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.
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