Audre Lorde – 23 Quotes

23 Quotes by Audre Lorde

I can’t really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?

– Audre Lorde

Poetry is not only dream and vision it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

– Audre Lorde

Art is not living. It is the use of living.

– Audre Lorde

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– 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

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.

– Audre Lorde

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

– Audre Lorde

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

– Audre Lorde

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

– Audre Lorde

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.

– Audre Lorde

There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself – whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. – because that’s the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.

– Audre Lorde

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

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.

– Audre Lorde

When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.

– Audre Lorde

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

– Audre Lorde