The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
JAMES BALDWINThe victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
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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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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
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Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
JAMES BALDWIN