A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
JAMES A. BALDWINThe writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
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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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You write in order to change the world.
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There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
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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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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.
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At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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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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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.
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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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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.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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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.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN