10 Best Audre Lorde Quotes And Sayings

“Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.” – Audre Lorde

“There are lesbians, God knows.. If you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York.. Who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.” – Audre Lorde

“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way ...

... they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” – Audre Lorde

“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.” – Audre Lorde

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.” – Audre Lorde

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

“When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.” – Audre Lorde

“When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” – Audre Lorde

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