Art is not living. It is the use of living.
Audre Lorde

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

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

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

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

But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it.
Audre Lorde

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

But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.
Audre Lorde

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

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
Audre Lorde


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

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde

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

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

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.
Audre Lorde

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

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.
Audre Lorde

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

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

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