black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

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 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
The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

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

Balance Men Weight
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
Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Answer Heart Question
It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Education Independent
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
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
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Order Real
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
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Coins Hate Mean
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Artist Disturb Peace
Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Important Life
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

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

Order World Writing

A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More James A. Baldwin Quotes