Audre Lorde

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

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

“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 wan...”

“Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.”

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

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

“It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.”

“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 kn...”

“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.”

“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.”

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

“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 doin...”

“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.”

“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...”