Audre Lorde Quotes

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.

Divide and conquer must become define and empower.

We are all in the process of becoming.

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

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.

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

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

In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

‎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.

You cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

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.

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.

You are the one that you are looking for.