Audre Lorde Quotes

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

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.

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.

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That’s what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it’s the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it.

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.

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.

You are the one that you are looking for.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms.