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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.

James Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deal Fear Hate Imagination Pain People Reason
You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Change People Reality World Writing
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Believe Deserve Desire Dreamss Event Love Wish
Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
JAMES BALDWIN

Born Cease Generation Responsible Witness
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
JAMES BALDWIN

Allow Lead Life Live Pay People
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWIN

Acceptance Black Black Lives Matter Power Refuse White World
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWIN

Breakup World Change Identity Real Safety
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Bread Float Human People Poison Surprise Water
When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
JAMES BALDWIN

Curosity Passion Peace Try Writing
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWIN

Freedom Independence One Liner Unbearable
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
JAMES BALDWIN

Born Change Inspirational Shock State
Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
JAMES BALDWIN

Happiness Inspirational Joy Life Sad Sorrow Teaching Trust
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES BALDWIN

Book Pain Read
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Artist Disturb One Liner Peace
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWIN

Circumstances History Myself Time
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWIN

Alive Connect People Teaching

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.

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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More James Baldwin Quotes