Quotes from Audre Lorde

Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change within our lives. We speak not of human difference, but of human deviance.

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each of us within our hearts knows 'that is not me.

For it is through the coming together of self-actualized individuals, female and male, that any real advances can be made. The old sexual power relationships based on a dominant/subordinate model between unequals have not served us as a people, nor as individuals.

Only to those Black men who are unclear about the pathways of their own definition can the self-actualization and self-protective bonding of Black women be seen as a threatening development.

But as we come more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must to is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.

Poets much teach what they know if we are to continue being

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. If Black men continue to define "femininity" instead of their own desires, and to do it in archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other's energies

The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex.

I might add here that in no socialist country that I have ever visited have I ever found an absence of racism or sexism, so the eradication of both of these diseases seems to involve more than just the abolition of capitalism as an institution.

To imply, however, that all women suffer the same oppression simply because we are women is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy.

Je savais ce que c'était d'être hantée par le fantôme d'un moi que je voulais être, mais dont je n'étais qu'à moitié consciente.

Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country.

Death folds the corners of my mouth into a heart-shaped star. It sits on my tongue like a stone around which your name blossoms distorted. — Audre Lorde, from "Speechless," The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde . (W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition February 17, 2000)

Living a self-conscious life, under the pressure of time, I work with the consciousness of death at my shoulder, not constantly, but often enough to leave a mark upon all my life's decisions and actions. And it does not matter whether this death comes next week or thirty years from now, this consciousness gives my life another breadth. It helps shape the words I speak, the way I love, my politics of action, the strength of my vision and purpose, the depth of my appreciation of living.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger.

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.

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.

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.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.

Women on trains have a life that is exactly livable the precision of days flashing past

Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.