Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWINA man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
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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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Hatred destroys the person who hates.
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There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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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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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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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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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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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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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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To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
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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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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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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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN