I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
...my experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
I am still learning - how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage,… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time.… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me-so different… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
There are many kinds of open. . . Love is a word, another kind of open. . . Take my word for jewel in your open light. — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too? — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
“For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
the fear of death is that you are dying too soon. Nobody wants to, but at the point that you die you can pray… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
“There is an important difference between openness and naïveté. Not everyone has good intentions nor means me well. I remind myself I do not… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian. ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change,… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
“I think that in America there are certain kinds of problems and in Russia there are certain kinds of problems, but basically, when you… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
Institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy,… — Audre Lorde Copy Share Image
