Hatred is a death wish for the hated not a life wish for anything else.

— Audre Lorde

He pondered that a little while, and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned.

— Audre Lorde

However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours? 'If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!' shouts the child.

— Audre Lorde

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

— Audre Lorde

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

— Audre Lorde

I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first a little and badly. Then bit by bit more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-singly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.

— Audre Lorde

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge.

— Audre Lorde

I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?

— Audre Lorde

I cried to think of how lucky we both were to have found each other, since it was clear that we were the only ones in the world who could understand what we understood in the instantaneous manner in which we understood it.

— Audre Lorde

I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence, nor to rob me of whatever strength can lie at the core of this experience, openly acknowledged and examined ... imposed silence about any area of our lives is a tool for separation and powerlessness.

— Audre Lorde