Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWINLife is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
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The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
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The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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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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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you’re afraid of the other side of the coin — to love and be loved.
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Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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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.
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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN