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We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.
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
Must
Work
Wake
Bed
Knowing
Done
More quotes by Audre Lorde
It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
Audre Lorde
I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.
Audre Lorde
I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
Art is not living. It is the use of living.
Audre Lorde
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
Audre Lorde
pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
Audre Lorde
I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.
Audre Lorde
Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.
Audre Lorde
I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
Audre Lorde
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
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
Audre Lorde
Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
Audre Lorde
Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
Audre Lorde
... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
Audre Lorde
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.
Audre Lorde
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde
It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.
Audre Lorde