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. BALDWINIt is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
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The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
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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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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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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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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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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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At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
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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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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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN