There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
~ 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.
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.
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
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.
When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.
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.
Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
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.
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.
Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
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.
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.
Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.
I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?
