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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

James A. Baldwin

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Mirror Order People
The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Order Real
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Fire Song Time
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Anger Argument Rage
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Change Life Needs
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
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Discovery People Travel
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Made People Philanthropy
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Greed Needs Writing
Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Important Life
… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Human Miracle Unprecedented
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Blessing Future Time
At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Mean Race Taste
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

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

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Popular Authors

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