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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.

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
Settling
Connection
Connections
Cannot
Parodies
Self
Pretenses
Love
Parody
Pretense
Settle

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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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I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.
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Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
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There are no honest poems about dead women.
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The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
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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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Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
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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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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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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.
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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 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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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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In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.
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Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily 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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Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
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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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Art is not living. It is the use of living.
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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