Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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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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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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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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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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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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.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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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.
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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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You write in order to change the world.
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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.
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There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
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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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN