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You write in order to change the world.

James A. Baldwin

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

Children Pay Profit
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

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

Answer Heart Question
If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Fire Song Time
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
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

People Responsibility Writing
A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Balance Men Weight
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Made People Philanthropy
I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Feelings People Thinking
One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

One Thing Writing
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
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
The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Men Myth Real Superiority White

You write in order to change the world.

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You write in order to change the world.

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