People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINThe artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
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Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
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No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
JAMES BALDWIN