Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWINThere is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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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.
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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.
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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life — without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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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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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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You write in order to change the world.
JAMES A. BALDWIN