Audre Lorde

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

"Your silence will not protect you."

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel every quiver they experience."

"There is no such thing as a single issue. We do not live single issue lives."

"Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel."

"The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane."

"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing."

"Poetry is not a luxury."

"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation."

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

"We can require ourselves to do better."

"Each of us is here for a reason and a season."

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared."

"If I could believe in reincarnation, I would hope to return as my cat."

"Change is not merely something that happens to us. It is something that we participate in and create."

"The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation."

"Our feelings are our most genuine paths of knowledge."

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

"We were never meant to survive."

"In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that provide alternatives."

"The quality of light by which we examine our lives has direct bearing upon the quality of the lives we lead."

"We must not wait passively for the future."

"It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others."

"The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings."

"I came out of fifteen years of silence speaking my poetry."

"The fear that we are not enough keeps us small, quiet, and isolated."

"We cannot afford to be silent."

"I believe that self-examination and constant attention to our failings is the price of our justification."

"Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness."