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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

James A. Baldwin

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Children Education Teacher
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Force Idea World
At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Drunk Morning Wine
When the South has trouble with its Negroes – when the Negroes refuse to remain in their “place” – it blames “outside agitators” and “Northern interference.” When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Blame Refuse Trouble
Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Important Life
The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Men Myth Real Superiority White
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Sky Trouble World
Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Case Death Institution
If the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Brother Mean Reality
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Balance Men Weight
Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Answer Heart Question
The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Racism Thinking White
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

People Responsibility Writing
Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Hate Hatred Person
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Empathy Pain Thinking

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

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Popular Authors

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