Audre Lorde

You are the one that you are looking for.

— Audre Lorde

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

— Audre Lorde

“[…] your smile has been to war”

— Audre Lorde

We are powerful because we have survived

— Audre Lorde

Your silence will not protect you.

— Audre Lorde

Women are powerful and dangerous.

— Audre Lorde

Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.

— Audre Lorde

What I leave behind has a life of its own.

— Audre Lorde

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

— Audre Lorde

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

— Audre Lorde

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.

— Audre Lorde

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

— Audre Lorde

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.”

— Audre Lorde

Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.

— Audre Lorde

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.

— Audre Lorde

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

— Audre Lorde

“The supposition that one sex needs the other's acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward…

— Audre Lorde

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the…

— Audre Lorde

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

— Audre Lorde

You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be…

— 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…

— Audre Lorde

I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there…

— Audre Lorde

“I am the sun and moon and forever hungry the sharpened edge where day and night shall meet and not be one.…

— Audre Lorde

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers…

— Audre Lorde

“The way you get people to testify against themselves is not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is…

— Audre Lorde

“And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one…

— Audre Lorde

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black…

— Audre Lorde

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying…

— Audre Lorde

Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from…

— Audre Lorde

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified,…

— Audre Lorde

But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said…

— Audre Lorde

To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities…

— Audre Lorde

“Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm , which each one of us within our…

— Audre Lorde

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos,…

— Audre Lorde

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the…

— Audre Lorde

Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And, it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance. Even in…

— Audre Lorde

African tradition deals with life as an experience to be lived. In many respects, it is much like the Eastern philosophies in…

— Audre Lorde

“The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to the content of…

— Audre Lorde

“And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those…

— Audre Lorde

“The peoples of the Soviet Union, in many respects, impress me as people who can not yet afford to be honest. When…

— Audre Lorde