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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

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Emotion Home Leave Left Universe
At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Drunk Morning Wine
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

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

Answer Heart Question
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
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
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
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
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Force Idea World
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Believe Inspirational People
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
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
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Life Thinking Trying
You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Goal Want Writing

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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