Quotes by Audre Lorde

About Audre Lorde:

Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, radical feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. One of her most notable efforts was her activist work with Afro-German women in the 1980s. She spoke on issues surrounding civil rights, feminism, and oppression. Her work gained both wide acclaim and wide criticism, due to the elements of social liberalism and sexuality presented in her work and her emphasis on revolution and change. She died of breast cancer in 1992, at the age of 58.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught ...

Audre Lorde

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ear...

Audre Lorde

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

Audre Lorde

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Audre Lorde

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.

Audre Lorde

. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, bec...

Audre Lorde

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Bio

  • NameAudre Lorde
  • DescriptionWriter and activist
  • BornFebruary 18, 1934
  • DiedNovember 11, 1992
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionLibrarian; Poet; Novelist; Writer; Author
  • AwardsLambda Literary Award