Audre Lorde Quotes About Literature
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Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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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.
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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.
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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
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If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
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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.
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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
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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.
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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.
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We're supposed to see "universal" love as heterosexual. What I insist upon in my work is that there is no such thing as universal love in literature.
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Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
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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.
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The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
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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.
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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.
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
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I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?
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In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.
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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.
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