Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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

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 Quote

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
- Audre Lorde Quote

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
- Audre Lorde Quote

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
- Audre Lorde Quote

I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
- Audre Lorde Quote

I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?
- Audre Lorde Quote

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.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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.
- Audre Lorde Quote

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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

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.
- Audre Lorde Quote

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
- Audre Lorde Quote

It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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

Our visions begin with our desires.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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 Quote

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.
- Audre Lorde Quote

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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 Quote

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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 Quote

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
- Audre Lorde Quote

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
- Audre Lorde Quote

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

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 Quote

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
- Audre Lorde Quote