The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
Interpretation
The quote explores the relationship between self-identity and powerful emotions.
Audre Lorde suggests that the erotic, or deep emotional and sensual experiences, serves as a bridge connecting our understanding of who we are with the tumultuous nature of our most intense feelings. This connection emphasizes the importance of embracing our desires and emotions as integral parts of our identity and experience, rather than merely chaotic forces to be controlled or suppressed.
In practice
In a discussion about emotional intelligence, this quote can highlight the significance of understanding our feelings in relation to self-identity.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.
Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse.
The land on which the cattle grazed was communal property. It was owned by no one. It was nobody's private farm. It was the common property of the people, shared by the people. So the practice of sharing was central to the concept of ownership of property.
Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.
The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine. Jiggling your knees blankeyed in the rain, when it snows in your nose you catch cold in your brain.
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