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The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

James A. Baldwin

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Answer Heart Question
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
A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Balance Men Weight
If the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Brother Mean Reality
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
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
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

Becoming Giving Heirs
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Discovery People Travel
The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Racism Thinking White
A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Atheism Causes Humanity
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Blame Refuse Trouble
For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Children Pay Profit
I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Done May People Spiritual
There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Baby Funny Uplifting

The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

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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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