A Quote by Opal Tometi
I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don't live and we don't fight for one specific struggle.
Related Quotes
I'm obsessed with Lorde. Oh my gosh. I'm always listening to Lorde. Her music is so powerful.
My literary heroes were mostly women writers and thinkers - Joy Williams, Joan Didion, Anne Sexton, June Jordan, Sarah Schulman, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Christa Wolf - and much of this writing was political as well as literary.
Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?" Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?
I really like Pat Parker. I really like Audre Lorde. I read a lot of the Beats when I was younger, so Diane di Prima, Gary Snyder. I've been discovering a lot more modern poems as well.
Life is struggle. Even to stand up is a struggle against the law of gravity and I think that the joy of life in the struggle itself - not the victory - because if it were we'd all lose. We're all gonna croak. We all lose the battle of life so if you can't find fun in the fight to live and to live to the fullest then you're a failure already, before you even start.
I read everything and anything related to being queer. I found solace in reading authors like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, who would become my activist staples - their words helped me grow up and taught me how to be bold and courageous. By studying them, I came to understand that being young and queer and black would not be easy.
He who would live must fight. He who doesn't wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.
I live with that contradiction daily. It is a constant struggle. I struggle very deeply. I don't think I've said this to anyone, but I've wondered if I just want to give up this world and live in the Congo and just be there. But I don't think that's what they need from me.
You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.
Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.
I think, in my own life, I'm pretty political. I think I have some very strong ideals, and I struggle a lot with it. I struggle a lot with feeling like, 'I have a platform; should I be saying more?'
When Marlee [Matlin] won her Oscar, she said, "and I just want to thank my parents." When I was saying those words for her, I knew my parents were in the audience. I was saying it for her and a little bit for myself, even though I wasn't saying it in sign language and they didn't understand what I was saying.
Well, anyway, her death changed our lives for the better, because it brought a kind of awareness, a specific sense of purpose and appreciation we hadn't had before. Would I trade that in order to have her back? In a fraction of a millisecond. But I won't ever have her back. So I have taken this, as her great gift to us. But. Do I block her out? Never. Do I think of her? Always. In some part of my brain, I think of her every single moment of every single day.
I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.
Every day, I am reminded that our life's journey is really about the people who touch us. When you die, it does not mean you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live. So live. Live! Fight like hell. And when you get too tired to fight, then lay down and rest and let somebody else fight for you.
Related Authors
Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes
Burmese
Activist
Edward Snowden Quotes
American
Activist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes
American
Activist
Emma Goldman Quotes
Russian
Activist
Gloria Steinem Quotes
American
Activist
Jesse Jackson Quotes
American
Activist
Julian Assange Quotes
Australian
Activist
Louis Farrakhan Quotes
American
Activist
Malala Yousafzai Quotes
Pakistani
Activist
Malcolm X Quotes
American
Activist
Michael Moore Quotes
American
Activist
Noam Chomsky Quotes
American
Activist
Peace Pilgrim Quotes
American
Activist
Shane Claiborne Quotes
American
Activist
Thomas Paine Quotes
English
Activist
Van Jones Quotes
American
Activist