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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.

James A. Baldwin

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

Order World Writing
It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Humanity Justice Law
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
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]
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Gratitude Pain Thinking
A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Balance Men Weight
The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Decision Education Look
At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Drunk Morning Wine
Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Hate Hatred Person
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

People Responsibility Writing
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
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
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 only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Order Real
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
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
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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