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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.

James A. Baldwin

The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Earth Life Weapons
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Clay Crack Past
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
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
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
Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Important Life
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
One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

One Thing Writing
At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Drunk Morning Wine
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Religious Use Validity
You write in order to change the world.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Order World Writing
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
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Attention Eye Men
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Believe Inspirational People
Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Hate Hatred Person

Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.

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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.

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