I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.


Audre Lorde

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I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not pr...
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When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less an...
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and when we speak we are afraid
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. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves...
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I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
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I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
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Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
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Revolution is not a onetime event.
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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 ter...
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Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
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In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequent...
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Art is not living. It is the use of living.
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Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to ...
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Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
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Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each o...
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Your silence will not protect you.
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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
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In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and gro...
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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
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Our visions begin with our desires.
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The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between th...
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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's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, w...
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We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the ...
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The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused...
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My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken,...
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded...
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Who I am is what fulfills me and what fulfills the vision I have of a world.
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Silence has never brought us anything of worth
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A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
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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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When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or te...
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What better way is there to police the streets of a minority community than to turn one generation a...
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I have died too many deaths that were not mine.
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I am
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the sharpened edge
where day and night shall...
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The black unicorn was mistaken for a shadow or symbol and taken through a cold country where mist pa...
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young seeds that have not seen sun forget and drown easily.
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I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic
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places do not change so much as what we seek in them
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I am tired of writing memorials to black men
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...may I never lose that terror that keeps me brave
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see me now
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laughing our name into echo
all the world shall reme...
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Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
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I get paralyzingly nervous a lot of times, so I tried bravado. The way I dress and carry myself, a l...
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The phrase 'teen hottie' literally makes me want to throw up.
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I've been in some situations where people have treated me like a fascinating toy. You know, it&#...
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Grace Jones was an influence, because I was like, 'These shoulders! These pants! Girls can wear ...
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I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and peop...
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People respond to something which intrigues them instead of something that gives them all the inform...
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I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. An...
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It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to conve...
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I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air,
So there.
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In a perfect world, I would never do any interviews, and probably there would be one photo out there...
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With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly thei...
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You're the only friend I need
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I come from a big, loud family, and I'm the quieter one. Performing is something I have to switc...
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I started writing music when I was around twelve. My current record company saw a video of me perfor...
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I try to stay away from talking about boys all the time. You can go to Taylor Swift to hear that.
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I love thrift shopping. You can get ten things because everything costs, like, three dollars.
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We all have Tumblr, and we all have Instagram and everything. People care so much about it because, ...
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If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough.
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