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The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

Top 10 Best 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.”

“It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.”

“The Seventh Sense" Wo men who build nations learn to love men who build nations learn to love children building sand castles by the rising sea”

“Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I see much better now and my eyes hurt.”

“Don't make waves is good advice from a leaky boat.”

“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.—

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Book Keywords:

representation, marble, memory, reality, inspirational, tradition, identity, fixed, history, clarity, poetry, expectation, proportion, statues

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