You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES BALDWINThe purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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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.
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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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Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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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.
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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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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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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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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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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.
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Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
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The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
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If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody
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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN