Audre Lorde

“I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side”

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

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.”

“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.”

“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. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

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

“We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.”

“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.”

“Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.”

“see me nowyour severed daughterlaughing our name into echoall the world shall remember ”

“Revolution is not a one time event.”

“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.”

“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.”

“...oppression is as American as apple pie... ”

“For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.”

“Without community, there is no liberation.”

“What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?”

“[Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.”

“There are many kinds of open. . . Love is a word, another kind of open. . . Take my word for jewel in your open light.”

“I am my best work - a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.”

“If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they probably will not survive.”

“And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.”

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”

“Your silence will not protect you.”

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

“It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.”

“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”

“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.”

“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.”

“and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to survive”

“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.”

“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”

“to that piece in each of us that refuses to be silent.”

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.”

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”