The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde Quotes

“There is a timbre of voice
that comes from not being heard
and knowing / you are not being
heard / noticed only
by others / not heard
for the same reason.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“The Seventh Sense"
Women
who build nations
learn
to love
men
who build nations
learn
to love
children
building sand castles
by the rising sea”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Always
in the middle
of our bloodiest battles
you lay down your arms
like flowering mines
to conqueror me home.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Recreation"

Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.

Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“How the young attempt and are broken differs from age to age We were brown free girls love singing beneath our skin sun in our hair in our eyes sun our fortune and the wind had made us golden made us gay.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Am I to be cursed forever with becoming somebody else on the way to myself?”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Don't make waves
is good advice
from a leaky boat.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Pulling down statues of rock from their high places
we must level the expectation
upon which they stand
waiting for us
to fulfill their image
waiting
for our feet to replace them.

Unless we refuse to sleep
even one night in houses of marble
the sight of our children's false pleasure
will undo us
for our children have grown
in the shadow of what was
the shape of marble
between their eyes and the sun
but we do not wish to stand
like great marble statues
between our children's eyes
and their sun.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Out of her womb of pain my mother spat me
into her ill-fitting harness of despair
into her deceits
where anger re-conceived me
piercing my eyes like arrows
pointed by her nightmare
of who I was not
becoming.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“I dream I am precious rock touching the edge of you that needs the moon’s loving.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“this urn makes nothing easy to say.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“what we share illuminates what we do not the rest is a burden of history we challenge”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“we mark tomorrow examining every cell of the past for what is useful”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else’s blood.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“All the poems I have ever written make a small book shaped like another me called by yesterday’s names the shedding of a past in patched conceits moulted like snake skin— a book of leavings.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“they will use my legends to shape their own language and make it ruler measuring the distance between my hungers and their own purpose.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Joyce / you always hated / being furious / and without anyone / to kill.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“my pathways are strewn with old discontents / outgrown defenses still sturdy as firebrick / unlovely and dangerous as measles / they wither into uselessness / but do not decay”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“compromise is a coffin nail”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“I speak without concern for the accusations / that I am too much or too little woman / that I am too black or too white / or too much myself”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Your face straightens into impatience with the loads of shit you are handed.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“I see much
better now
and my eyes hurt.”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

“Death
folds the corners of my mouth
into a heart-shaped star.
It sits on my tongue like a stone
around which your name blossoms
distorted.

— Audre Lorde, from “Speechless,” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. (W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition February 17, 2000)”
― Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde