Quotes of Audre Lorde - somelinesforyou

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

- Audre Lorde

“ Revolution is not a onetime event. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever – only, nothing is eternal. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ Your silence will not protect you. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ 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. ”

- 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

“ Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever – only, nothing is eternal. ”

- Audre Lorde

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

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

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

- Audre Lorde

“ There is no thing as a singleissue struggle because we do not live singleissue lives. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? 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? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ 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. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ 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. ”

- Audre Lorde

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

- Audre Lorde

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

- Audre Lorde

“ For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ If you come as softly As wind within the trees You may hear what I hear See what sorrow sees. If you come as lightly As threading dew I will take you gladly Nor ask more of you. You may sit beside me Silent as a breath Only those who stay dead Shall remember death. And if you come I will be silent Nor speak harsh words to you. I will not ask you why, now. Or how, or what you do. We shall sit here, softly Beneath two different years And the rich earth between us Shall drink our tears. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavyfooted hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive. ”

- Audre Lorde

“ If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core the fountain of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury") ”

- Audre Lorde

“ Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home. ”

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

- Audre Lorde

“ I learned to teach grammar. And then I realized that we can't separate these two things. We have to do them together because they're integral. That's when I learned how important grammar is, that part of the understanding process is grammatical. That's how I taught myself to write prose. I keep learning and learning. I'd come into my class and say, "Guess what I found out last night. Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time." I learned that grammar was not arbitrary, that it served a purpose, that it helped to form the way we through, that it could be freeing as well as restrictive. ”

- Audre Lorde

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

- Audre Lorde

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

- Audre Lorde

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

- Audre Lorde

“ I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. ”

- Audre Lorde
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7