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" When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid. "
Audre Lorde
Vision
Strength
Service
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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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" 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. "
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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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" 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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" Your silence will not protect you. "
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" 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. "
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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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" Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before. "
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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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" The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. "
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" 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. "
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" Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away. "
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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 sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. "
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" I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. "
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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 other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us. "
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" Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms. "
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" You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements. "
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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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