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Everybody's Journey Is Individual. If You Fall In Love With A Boy, You Fall In Love With A Boy. The Fact That Many Americans Consider It A Disease Says More About Them Than It Does About Homosexuality.

-James A. Baldwin

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Everybody's Journey Is Individual.

James A. Baldwin

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Everybody's Journey Is Individual. If You Fall In Love With A Boy, You Fall In Love With A Boy. The Fact That Many Americans Consider It A Disease Says More About Them Than It Does About Homosexuality.

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Topic

Falling In Love

More From James A. Baldwin

My Friend Was About To Introduce Me When She Looked At Me And Smiled And Said, "whose Little Boy Are You?"

African American

The Occurrence Of An Event Is Not The Same Thing As Knowing What It Is That One Has Lived Through.

You Don’t Have A Home Until You Leave It And Then, When You Have Left It, You Never Can Go Back.

Christianity Has Operated With An Unmitigated Arrogance And Cruelty - Necessarily, Since A Religion Ordinarily Imposes On Those Who Have Discovered The True Faith The Spiritual Duty Of Liberating The Infidels.

It Is Rare Indeed That People Give. Most People Guard And Keep; They Suppose That It Is They Themselves And What They Identify With Themselves That They Are Guarding And Keeping, Whereas What They Are Actually Guarding And Keeping Is Their System Of Reality And What They Assume Themselves To Be.

Recognizing A Problem Doesn't Always Bring A Solution, But Until We Recognize That Problem, There Can Be No Solution.

The Reason People Think It's Important To Be White Is That They Think It's Important Not To Be Black.

The Role Of The Artist Is Exactly The Same As The Role Of The Lover. If I Love You, I Have To Make You Conscious Of The Things You Don’t See.

The Purpose Of Education...is To Create In A Person The Ability To Look At The World For Himself, To Make His Own Decisions.

The Trick Is To Love Somebody.... If You Love One Person, You See Everybody Else Differently.

The Making Of An American Begins At The Point Where He Himself Rejects All Other Ties, Any Other History, And Himself Adopts The Vesture Of His Adopted Land.

When Americans Look Out On The World, They See Nothing But Dark And Menacing Strangers Who Appear To Have No Sense Of Rhythm At All, Nor Any Respect Or Affection For White People; And White Americans Really Do Not Know What To Make Of All This, Except To Increase The Defense Budget.

When Human Rights Are Abused On A Grand Scale, The Broth Of Purity Boils And Feeds The Rebellion Of A New Order.

You Know, It's Not The World That Was My Oppressor, Because What The World Does To You, If The World Does It To You Long Enough And Effectively Enough, You Begin To Do To Yourself.

The Betrayal Of A Belief Is Not The Same Thing As Ceasing To Believe. If This Were Not So There Would Be No Moral Standards In The World At All.

The Miracle Is That Some Have Stepped Out Of The Rags Of The Republic's Definition To Assume The Great Burden And Glory Of Their Humanity And Their Responsibility For One Another. It Is An Extraordinary Achievement To Be Trapped In The Dungeon Of Color And To Dare To Shake Down Its Walls And To Step Out Of It Leaving The Jailkeeper In The Rubble.

This Is The Charged, The Dangerous Moment, When Everything Must Be Re-examined, Must Be Made New, When Nothing At All Can Be Taken For Granted.

People Who Have Been Wronged Will Attempt To Right The Wrong; They Would Not Be People If They Didn't. They Can Rarely Afford To Be Scrupulous About The Means They Will Use. They Will Use Such Means As Come To Hand. Neither, In The Main, Will They Distinguish One Oppressor From Another, Nor See Through To The Root Principle Of Their Oppression.

There Are Few Things Under Heaven More Unnerving Than The Silent, Accumulating Contempt And Hatred Of A People.

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.

We Take Our Shape, It Is True, Within And Against That Cage Of Reality Bequeathed Us At Our Birth; And Yet It Is Precisely Through Our Dependence On This Reality That We Are Most Endlessly Betrayed.

I Conceive Of God, In Fact, As A Means Of Liberation And Not A Means To Control Others.

True Rebels After All, Are As Rare As True Lovers,and In Both Cases, To Mistake A Fever For Passion Can Destroy One's Life

I Often Wonder What I'd Do If There Weren't Any Books In The World.

The Relatively Conscious Whites And The Relatively Conscious Blacks, Who Must, Like Lovers, Insist On, Or Create, The Consciousness Of The Others In Order To End The Racial Nightmare And Acheive Our Country.

Freaks Are Called Freaks And Are Treated As They Are Treated – In The Main, Abominably – Because They Are Human Beings Who Cause To Echo, Deep Within Us, Our Most Profound Terrors And Desires.

I've Always Believed That You Can Think Positive Just As Well As You Can Think Negative.

Motivational Sports

Europe Has What We [americans] Do Not Have Yet, A Sense Of The Mysterious And Inexorable Limits Of Life, A Sense, In A Word, Of Tragedy. And We Have What They Sorely Need: A Sense Of Life's Possibilities.

I Had Never Before Thought Of How Awful The Relationship Must Be Between The Musician And His Instrument. He Has To Fill It, This Instrument, With The Breath Of Life, His Own. He Has To Make It Do What He Wants It To Do. And A Piano Is Just A Piano. It's Made Out Of So Much Wood And Wires And Little Hammers And Big Ones, And Ivory. While There's Only So Much You Can Do With It, The Only Way To Find This Out Is To Try; To Try And Make It Do Everything.

The Moral Authority In The Western World Is Gone. And It Is Gone Forever. It Is Gone, Not Because Of The Criminal Record--everybody's Record Is Criminal. It Is Gone Because You Cannot Do One Thing And Pretend You're Doing Another! None Of Us, Who Are Sitting Around In Some Of The True Limbo Out-of-space, Which We Call "now," Waiting To Be Saved, Civilized, Or Discovered, Have The Moral Authority To Say Anything.

It Took Many Years Of Vomiting Up All The Filth I’d Been Taught About Myself, And Half-believed, Before I Was Able To Walk On The Earth As Though I Had A Right To Be Here.

The Face Of A Lover Is An Unknown, Precisely Because It Is Invested With So Much Of Oneself. It Is A Mystery, Containing, Like All Mysteries, The Possibility Of Torment.

Inspirational Love

The Responsibility Of A Writer Is To Excavate The Experience Of The People Who Produced Him.

Most Of Us Are About As Eager To Change As We Were To Be Born, And Go Through Our Changes In A Similar State Of Shock.

We Do Not Trust Educated People And Rarely, Alas, Produce Them, For We Do Not Trust The Independence Of Mind Which Alone Makes A Genuine Education Possible.

People Don't Have Any Mercy. They Tear You Limb From Limb, In The Name Of Love. Then, When You're Dead, When They've Killed You By What They Made You Go Through, They Say You Didn't Have Any Character. They Weep Big, Bitter Tears - Not For You. For Themselves, Because They've Lost Their Toy.

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.

The Questions Which One Asks Oneself Begin, At Least, To Illuminate The World, And Become One's Key To The Experience Of Others.

The Young Think That Failure Is The Siberian End Of The Line, Banishment From All The Living, And Tend To Do What I Then Did - Which Was To Hide.

An Identity Is Questioned Only When It Is Menaced, As When The Mighty Begin To Fall, Or When The Wretched Begin To Rise, Or When The Stranger Enters The Gates, Never, Thereafter, To Be A Stranger.

The Occurrence Of An Event Is Not The Same Thing As Knowing What It Is That One Has Lived Through. Most People Had Not Lived -- Nor Could It, For That Matter, Be Said That They Had Died-- Through Any Of Their Terrible Events. They Had Simply Been Stunned By The Hammer. They Passed Their Lives Thereafter In A Kind Of Limbo Of Denied And Unexamined Pain. The Great Question That Faced Him This Morning Was Whether Or Not Had Had Ever, Really, Been Present At His Life.

Terrible Events

One Can Only Face In Others What One Can Face In Oneself.

I Think That The Inability To Love Is The Central Problem, Because That Inability Masks A Certain Terror, And That Terror Is The Terror Of Being Touched. And If You Can't Be Touched, You Can't Be Changed. And If You Can't Be Changed, You Can't Be Alive.

Inability To Love

But, When The Chips Are Down, Its Better To Be Furious With Someone You Love, Or Frightened For Someone You Love, Than Be Put Through The Merciless Horror Of Being Ashamed Of Someone You Love.

Someone You Love

Confronted With The Impossibility Of Remaining Faithful To One's Beliefs, And The Equal Impossibility Of Becoming Free Of Them, One Can Be Driven To The Most Inhuman Excesses.

We Should Certainly Know By Now That It Is One Thing To Overthrow A Dictator Or Repel An Invader And Quite Another Thing Really To Achieve A Revolution. Time And Time And Time Again, The People Discover That They Have Merely Betrayed Themselves Into The Hands Of Yet Another Pharaoh, Who, Since He Was Necessary To Put The Broken Country Together, Will Not Let Them Go.

To Be A Negro In This Country And To Be Relatively Conscious Is To Be In A Rage Almost All The Time.

African American

It Is Astonishing The Lengths To Which A Person, Or A People, Will Go In Order To Avoid A Truthful Mirror.

I Thought Of The People Before Me Who Had Looked Down At The River And Gone To Sleep Beneath It. I Wondered About Them. I Wondered How They Had Done It--it, The Physical Act. I Simply Wondered About The Dead Because Their Days Had Ended And I Did Not Know How I Would Get Through Mine.

The Challenge Is In The Moment; The Time Is Always Now.

Live In The Moment

Drive To The Heart Of Every Answer And Expose The Question The Answer Hides.

Love Takes Off The Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within. I Use The Word "love" Here Not Merely In The Personal Sense But As A State Of Being, Or A State Of Grace - Not In The Infantile American Sense Of Being Made Happy But In The Tough And Universal Sense Of Quest And Daring And Growth.

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession, More Or Less Oblique. All Artists, If They Are To Survive, Are Forced, At Last, To Tell The Whole Story, To Vomit The Anguish Up.

I Am Aware That No Man Is A Villain In His Own Eyes.

I Met A Lot Of People In Europe. I Even Encountered Myself.

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

Freedom Lurked Around Us And I Understood, At Last, That He Could Help Us Be Free If We Would Listen, That He Would Never Be Free Until We Did.

Know From Whence You Came. If You Know Whence You Came, There Are Absolutely No Limitations To Where You Can Go.

It Is Astonishing That In A Country So Devoted To The Individual, So Many People Should Be Afraid To Speak.

I Was Guilty And Irritated And Full Of Love And Pain. I Wanted To Kick Him And I Wanted To Take Him In My Arms.

There Are People In The World For Whom "coming Along" Is A Perpetual Process, People Who Are Destined Never To Arrive.

Nakedness Has No Color: This Can Come As News Only To Those Who Have Never Covered, Or Been Covered By, Another Naked Human Being.

Whatever You Describe To Another Person Is Also A Revelation Of Who You Are And Who You Think You Are. You Can Not Describe Anything Without Betraying Your Point Of View, Your Aspirations, Your Fears, Your Hopes. Everything.

There Are Few Things More Dreadful Than Dealing With A Man Who Knows He Is Going Under, In His Own Eyes, And In The Eyes Of Others. Nothing Can Help That Man. What Is Left Of That Man Flees From What Is Left Of Human Attention.

The Power Of The White World Is Threatened Whenever A Black Man Refuses To Accept The White World's Definitions.

The Establishment Of Democracy On The American Continent Was Scarcely As Radical A Break With The Past As Was The Necessity, Which Americans Faced, Of Broadening This Concept To Include Black Men.

Everything Depends On How Relentlessly One Forces From Experience The Last Drop, Sweet Or Bitter, It Can Possibly Give.

Nothing Is More Desirable Than To Be Released From An Affliction, But Nothing Is More Frightening Than To Be Divested Of A Crutch.

For Nothing Is Fixed, Forever And Forever, It Is Not Fixed; The Earth Is Always Shifting, The Light Is Always Changing, The Sea Does Not Cease To Grind Down Rock. Generations Do Not Cease To Be Born, And We Are Responsible To Them Because We Are The Only Witnesses They Have. The Sea Rises, The Light Fails, Lovers Cling To Each Other And Children Cling To Us. The Moment We Cease To Hold Each Other, The Moment We Break Faith With One Another, The Sea Engulfs Us And The Light Goes Out.

The American Ideal Is, After All, That Everyone Should Be As Much Alike As Possible.

You Write In Order To Change The World, Knowing Perfectly Well That You Probably Can't, But Also Knowing That Literature Is Indispensable To The World... The World Changes According To The Way People See It, And If You Alter, Even By A Millimeter, The Way... People Look At Reality, Then You Can Change It.

The Civilized Have Created The Wretched, Quite Coldly And Deliberately, And Do Not Intend To Change The Status Quo; Are Responsible For Their Slaughter And Enslavement; Rain Down Bombs On Defenseless Children Whenever And Wherever They Decide That Their "vital Interests" Are Menaced, And Think Nothing Of Torturing A Man To Death: These People Are Not To Be Taken Seriously When They Speak Of The "sanctity" Of Human Life, Or The "conscience" Of The Civilized World.

What Passes For Identity In America Is A Series Of Myths About One's Heroic Ancestors.

A Society Must Assume That It Is Stable, But The Artist Must Know, And He Must Let Us Know, That There Is Nothing Stable Under Heaven.

The World's Definitions Are One Thing And The Life One Actually Lives Is Quite Another. One Cannot Allow Oneself, Nor One's Family, Friends, Or Lovers - To Say Nothing Of One's Children - To Live According To The World's Definitions: One Must Find A Way, Perpetually, To Be Stronger And Better Than That.

It Will Be Hard James But You Come From Sturdy Peasant Stock Men Who Picked Cotton And Dammed Rivers And Built Railroads And In The Teeth Of The Most Terrifying Odds Achieved An Unassailable And Monumental Dignity You Come From A Long Line Of Great Poets Some Of The Greatest Poets Since Homer. One Of Them Said "the Very Time I Thought I Was Lost My Dungeon Shook And My Chains Fell Off." You Know And I Know That The Country Is Celebrating One Hundred Years Of Freedom One Hundred Years Too Soon. We Cannot Be Free Until They Are Free. God Bless You James And Godspeed.

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.

... Every Human Being Is An Unprecedented Miracle.

No One Knows Very Much About The Life Of Another. This Ignorance Becomes Vivid, If You Love Another. Love Sets The Imagination On Fire, And, Also, Eventually, Chars The Imagination Into A Harder Element: Imagination Cannot Match Love, Cannot Plunge So Deep, Or Range So Wide.

Allegiance, After All, Has To Work Two Ways; And One Can Grow Weary Of An Allegiance Which Is Not Reciprocal.

It Is Said That The Camera Cannot Lie, But Rarely Do We Allow It To Do Anything Else, Since The Camera Sees What You Point It At: The Camera Sees What You Want It To See.

One Writes Out Of One Thing Only - One's Own Experience.

Whatever White People Do Not Know About Negroes Reveals, Precisely And Inexorably, What They Do Not Know About Themselves.

An Identity Would Seem To Be Arrived At By The Way In Which The Person Faces And Uses His Experience.

The Place In Which I'll Fit Will Not Exist Until I Make It.

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.

If You're Afraid To Die, You Will Not Be Able To Live.

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.

Heavenly Witnesses Are A Tricky Lot, To Be Used By Whoever Is Closest To Heaven At The Time. And Legend And Theology, Which Are Designed To Sanctify Our Fears, Crimes, And Aspirations, Also Reveal Them For What They Are.

People Can Cry Much Easier Than They Can Change, A Rule Of Psychology People Like Me Picked Up As Kids On The Street.

I Really Do Believe In The New Jerusalem. I Really Do Believe That We Can All Become Better Than We Are. I Know We Can. But The Price Is Enormous And People Are Not Yet Willing To Pay It.

Freedom Is Not Something That Anybody Can Be Given. Freedom Is Something People Take, And People Are As Free As They Want To Be

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

Somebody," Said Jacques, "your Father Or Mine, Should Have Told Us That Not Many People Have Ever Died Of Love. But Multitudes Have Perished, And Are Perishing Every Hour - And In The Oddest Places! - For The Lack Of It.

For These Are All Our Children, We Will All Profit By Or Pay For Whatthey Become.

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.

It Is Very Nearly Impossible... To Become An Educated Person In A Country So Distrustful Of The Independent Mind.

Because I Was Raised In A Christian Culture I Never Considered Myself To Be A Totally Free Human Being.

Identity Would Seem To Be The Garment With Which One Covers The Nakedness Of The Self: In Which Case, It Is Best That The Garment Be Loose, A Little Like The Robes Of The Desert, Through Which One's Nakedness Can Always Be Felt, And, Sometimes, Discerned. This Trust In One's Nakedness Is All That Gives One The Power To Change One's Robes.

Ask Any Mexican, Any Puerto Rican, Any Black Man, Any Poor Person - Ask The Wretched How They Fare In The Halls Of Justice, And Then You Will Know, Not Whether Or Not The Country Is Just, But Whether Or Not It Has Any Love For Justice, Or Any Concept Of It. It Is Certain, In Any Case, That Ignorance, Allied With Power, Is The Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have.

Tell Me, He Said, "what Is This Thing About Time? Why Is It Better To Be Late Than Early? People Are Always Saying, We Must Wait, We Must Wait. What Are They Waiting For?" "well […] I Guess People Wait In Order To Make Sure Of What They Feel." "and When You Have Waited—-has It Made You Sure?

If I Could Make You Stay, I Would,’ He Shouted. ‘if I Had To Beat You, Chain You, Starve You—if I Could Make You Stay, I Would.’ He Turned Back Into The Room; The Wind Blew His Hair. He Shook His Finger At Me, Grotesquely Playful. ‘one Day, Perhaps, You Will Wish I Had.

A Writer Has To Take All The Risks Of Putting Down What He Sees. No One Can Tell Him About That. No One Can Control That Reality. It Reminds Me Of Something Pablo Picasso Was Supposed To Have Said To Gertrude Stein While He Was Painting Her Portrait. Gertrude Said, “i Don’t Look Like That.” And Picasso Replied, “you Will.” And He Was Right.

There Are Too Many Things We Do Not Wish To Know About Ourselves. People Are Not, For Example, Terribly Anxious To Be Equal (equal, After All, To What And To Whom?) But They Love The Idea Of Being Superior.

Love Him And Let Him Love You. Do You Think Anything Else Under Heaven Really Matters?

If One Cannot Risk Oneself, Then One Is Simply Incapable Of Giving. And, After All, One Can Give Freedom Only By Setting Someone Free.

All I Know About Music Is That Not Many People Ever Really Hear It. And Even Then, On The Rare Occasions When Something Opens Within, And The Music Enters, What We Mainly Hear, Or Hear Corroborated, Are Personal, Private, Vanishing Evocations. But The Man Who Creates The Music Is Hearing Something Else, Is Dealing With The Roar Rising From The Void And Imposing Order On It As It Hits The Air. What Is Evoked In Him, Then, Is Of Another Order, More Terrible Because It Has No Words, And Triumphant, Too, For That Same Reason. And His Triumph, When He Triumphs, Is Ours.

And I Was Yet Aware That This Was Only A Moment, That The World Waited Outside, As Hungry As A Tiger, And That Trouble Stretched Above Us, Longer Than The Sky.

It Must Be Remembered That In Those Great Days I Was Considered To Be An "integrationist" - This Was Never, Quite, My Own Idea Of Myself - And Malcolm Was Considered To Be A "racist In Reverse." This Formulation, In Terms Of Power - And Power Is The Arena In Which Racism Is Acted Out - Means Absolutely Nothing: It May Even Be Described As A Cowardly Formulation. The Powerless, By Definition, Can Never Be "racists," For They Can Never Make The World Pay For What They Feel Or Fear Except By The Suicidal Endeavor Which Makes Them Fanatics Or Revolutionaries, Or Both.

He Leaned Up A Little And Watched Her Face. Her Face Would Now Be, Forever, More Mysterious And Impenetrable Than The Face Of Any Stranger. Strangers' Faces Hold No Secrets Because The Imagination Does Not Invest Them With Any. But The Face Of A Lover Is An Unknown Precisely Because It Is Invested With So Much Of Oneself. It Is A Mystery, Containing, Like All Mysteries, The Possibility Of Torment.

How Can One Respect, Let Alone Adopt, The Values Of A People Who Do Not, On Any Level Whatever, Live The Way They Say They Do, Or The Way They Say They Should?

You Think Your Pain And Your Heartbreak Are Unprecedented In The History Of The World, But Then You Read. It Was Dostoevsky And Dickens Who 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 Ever Had Been Alive. Only If We Face These Open Wounds In Ourselves Can We Understand Them In Other People.

You Don't Need Numbers; You Need Passion, And This Is Proven By The History Of The World!

People Who Cling To Their Illusions Find It Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Learn Anything Worth Learning: A People Under The Necessity Of Creating Themselves Must Examine Everything, And Soak Up Learning The Way The Roots Of A Tree Soak Up Water.

It Is A Very Rare Man Who Does Not Victimize The Helpless.

Most People... Find A Disorientating Mismatch Between The Long-term Nature Of Their Liabilities And The Increasingly Short-term Nature Of Their Assets.

There Exists Among The Intolerable Degraded, The Perverse And Powerful Desire To Force Into The Arena Of The Actual Those Fantastic Crimes Of Which They Have Been Accused, Achieving Their Vengeance And Their Own Destruction Through Making The Nightmare Real.

I Can't Believe What You Say, Because I See What You Do.

Every Legend, Moreover, Contains Its Residuum Of Truth, And The Root Function Of Language Is To Control The Universe By Describing It.

The South Is Very Beautiful But Its Beauty Makes One Sad Because The Lives That People Live Here, And Have Lived Here, Are So Ugly.

But It Was Not The Room’s Disorder Which Was Frightening; It Was The Fact That When One Began Searching For The Key To This Disorder, One Realized That It Was Not To Be Found In Any Of The Usual Places. For This Was Not A Matter Of Habit Or Circumstance Or Temperament; It Was A Matter Of Punishment And Grief.

A Real Writer Is Always Shifting And Changing And Searching.

No People Come Into Possession Of A Culture Without Having Paid A Heavy Price For It.

There Is Never Time In The Future In Which We Will Work Out Our Salvation. The Challenge Is In The Moment; The Time Is Always Now.

People Who Shut Their Eyes To Reality Simply Invite Their Own Destruction.

Any Honest Examination Of The National Life Proves How Far We Are From The Standard Of Human Freedom With Which We Began. The Recovery Of This Standard Demands Of Everyone Who Loves This Country A Hard Look At Himself, For The Greatest Achievements Must Begin Somewhere, And They Always Begin With The Person.

We All Commit Our Crimes. The Thing Is To Not Lie About Them -- To Try To Understand What You Have Done, Why You Have Done It. That Way, You Can Begin To Forgive Yourself. That's Very Important. If You Don't Forgive Yourself You'll Never Be Able To Forgive Anybody Else And You'll Go On Committing The Same Crimes Forever.

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

The Most Dangerous Creation Of Any Society Is The Man Who Has Nothing To Lose.

You're Getting To Be A Big Boy,' I Said Desperately, 'it's Time You Started Thinking About Your Future.' 'i'm Thinking About My Future,' Said Sonny, Grimly. 'i Think About It All The Time.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

Love Is Like The Lightning, And Your Maturity Is Signaled By The Extent To Which You Can Accept The Dangers And The Power And The Beauty Of Love.

But The Relationship Of Morality And Power Is A Very Subtle One. Because Ultimately Power Without Morality Is No Longer Power.

Americans Should Never Come To Europe,' She Said, And Tried To Laugh And Began To Cry, 'it Means They Never Can Be Happy Again. What's The Good Of An American Who Isn't Happy? Happiness Was All We Had.

The Writer's Only Real Task: To Recreate Out Of The Disorder Of Life That Order Which Is Art

We Can Make America What America Must Become.

What Passes For Identity In America Is A Series Of Myths About One's Heroic Ancestors. It's Astounding To Me, For Example, That So Many People Really Appear To Believe That The Country Was Founded By A Band Of Heroes Who Wanted To Be Free. That Happens Not To Be True. What Happened Was That Some People Left Europe Because They Couldn't Stay There Any Longer And Had To Go Somewhere Else To Make It. That's All. They Were Hungry, They Were Poor, They Were Convicts. Those Who Were Making It In England, For Example, Did Not Get On The Mayflower. That's How The Country Was Settled.

The Paradox Of Education Is Precisely This - That As One Begins To Become Conscious One Begins To Examine The Society In Which He Is Being Educated.

America Sometimes Resembles, At Least From The Point Of View Of A Black Man, An Exceedingly Monotonous Minstrel Show; The Same Dances, Same Music, Same Jokes. One Has Done (or Been) The Show So Long That One Can Do It In One’s Own Sleep.

The Future Is Like Heaven-everyone Exalts It But No One Wants To Go There Now.

It Seems To Be Typical Of Life In America ... That The Second Generation Has No Time To Talk To The First.

Great Art Can Only Be Created Out Of Love.

Education Is Indoctrination If You're White - Subjugation If You're Black.

I Prefer Sinners And Madmen, Who Can Learn, Who Can Change, Who Can Teach-or People Like Myself, If I May Say So, Who Are Not Afraid To Eat A Lobster Alone As They Take On Their Shoulders The Monumental Weight Of Thirty Years

Do I Really Want To Be Integrated Into A Burning House?

The Only Thing That White People Have That Black People Need, Or Should Want, Is Power-and No One Holds Power Forever.

Black And White

She Was Twenty And Had Come To Realize That, Though She Had A Voice, She Wasn't A Singer; That To Endure And Embrace The Life Of A Singer Demands A Whole Lot More Than A Voice.

Precisely At The Point When You Begin To Develop A Conscience You Must Find Yourself At War With Your Society.

The American Ideal Of Sexuality Appears To Be Rooted In The American Ideal Of Masculinity. This Idea Has Created Cowboys And Indians, Good Guys And Bad Guys, Punks And Studs, Tough Guys And Softies, Butch And Faggot, Black And White. It Is An Ideal So Paralytically Infantile That It Is Virtually Forbidden - As An Unpatriotic Act - That The American Boy Evolve Into The Complexity Of Manhood

Black And White

In Order To Have A Conversation With Someone You Must Reveal Yourself.

Sentimentality, The Ostentatious Parading Of Excessive And Spurious Emotion, Is The Mark Of Dishonesty, The Inability To Feel.

After My Best Friend Jumped Off The Bridge, I Knew That I Was Next. So-paris. With Forty Dollars And A One-way Ticket.

If The Word 'integration' Means Anything, This Is What It Means That We, With Love, Shall Force Our Brothers To See Themselves As They Are, To Cease Fleeing From Reality And Begin To Change It.

For Nothing Is More Unbearable, Once One Has It, Than Freedom.

James Joyce Is Right About History Being A Nightmare-- But It May Be That Nightmare From Which No One Can Awaken. People Are Trapped In History And History In Trapped In Them.

When You're Writing You're Trying To Find Out Something Which You Don't Know.

Anyone Who Has Ever Struggled With Poverty Knows How Extremely Expensive It Is To Be Poor.

All Of Africa Will Be Free Before We Can Get A Lousy Cup Of Coffee.

For, While The Tale Of How We Suffer, And How We Are Delighted, And How We May Triumph Is Never New, It Always Must Be Heard. There Isn't Any Other Tale To Tell, It's The Only Light We've Got In All This Darkness.

I Began Plotting Novels At About The Time I Learned To Read. The Story Of My Childhood Is The Usual Bleak Fantasy, And We Can Dismiss It With The Restrained Observation That I Certainly Would Not Consider Living It Again.

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.

Youth Must Be The Worst Time In Anybody's Life. Everything's Happening For The First Time, Which Means That Sorrow, Then, Lasts Forever. Later, You Can See That There Was Something Very Beautiful In It. That's Because You Ain't Got To Go Through It No More.

Secrets Hidden At The Heart Of Midnight Are Simply Waiting To Be Dragged To The Light, As, On Some Unlucky High Noon, They Always Are. But Secrets Shrouded In The Glare Of Candor Are Bound To Defeat Even The Most Determined And Agile Inspector For The Light Is Always Changing And Proves That The Eye Cannot Be Trusted.

It Is A Great Shock At The Age Of Five Or Six To Find That In A World Of Gary Coopers You Are The Indian.

We Cannot Discuss The State Of Our Minorities Until We First Have Some Sense Of What We Are, Who We Are, What Our Goals Are, And What We Take Life To Be. The Question Is Not What We Can Do Now For The Hypothetical Mexican, The Hypothetical Negro. The Question Is What We Really Want Out Of Life, For Ourselves, What We Think Is Real.

Rage Cannot Be Hidden, It Can Only Be Dissembled. This Dissembling Deludes The Thoughtless, And Strengthens Rage And Adds, To Rage, Contempt.

I Was In His Hands, He Called Me By The Thunder At My Ear. I Was In His Hands: I Was Being Changed; All That I Could Do Was Cling To Him. I Did Not Realize, Until I Realized It, That I Was Also Kissing Him, That Everything Was Breaking And Changing And Turning In Me And Moving Toward Him.

If I Am Not What You Say I Am, Then You Are Not Who You Think You Are.

Writing Is A Political Instrument.

People Are Trapped In History And History Is Trapped In Them.

When You’re Writing, You’re Trying To Find Out Something Which You Don’t Know. The Whole Language Of Writing For Me Is Finding Out What You Don’t Want To Know, What You Don’t Want To Find Out. But Something Forces You To Anyway.

The Question Of Sexual Dominance Can Exist Only In The Nightmare Of That Soul Which Has Armed Itself, Totally, Against The Possibility Of The Changing Motion Of Conquest And Surrender, Which Is Love.

There Is No Reason For You To Try To Become Like White People And There Is No Basis Whatever For Their Impertinent Assumption That *they* Must Accept *you*. The Really Terrible Thing, Old Buddy, Is That You Must Accept Them. And I Mean That Very Seriously. You Must Accept Them And Accept Them With Love.

The Poet Or The Revolutionary Is There To Articulate The Necessity, But Until The People Themselves Apprehend It, Nothing Can Happen ... Perhaps It Can't Be Done Without The Poet, But It Certainly Can't Be Done Without The People. The Poet And The People Get On Generally Very Badly, And Yet They Need Each Other. The Poet Knows It Sooner Than The People Do. The People Usually Know It After The Poet Is Dead; But That's All Right. The Point Is To Get Your Work Done, And Your Work Is To Change The World.

Years Ago, When He Was Around Fourteen, He'd Been All Hipped On The Idea Of Going To India. He Read Books About People Sitting On Rocks, Naked, In All Kinds Of Weather, But Mostly Bad, Naturally, And Walking Barefoot Through Hot Coals And Arriving At Wisdom. I Used To Say That It Sounded To Me As Though They Were Getting Away From Wisdom As Fast As They Could. I Think He Sort Of Looked Down On Me For That.

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.

To Be Black And Conscious In America Is To Be In A Constant State Of Rage.

Our Dehumanization Of The Negro Then Is Indivisible From Our Dehumanization Of Ourselves; The Loss Of Our Own Identity Is The Price We Pay For Our Annulment Of His.

We Are Responsible For The World In Which We Find Ourselves, If Only Because We Are The Only Sentient Force Which Can Change It.

When The White Man Came To Africa, The White Man Had The Bible And The African Had The Land, But Now It Is The White Man Who Is Being, Reluctantly And Bloodily, Separated From The Land, And The African Who Is Still Attempting To Digest Or To Vomit Up The Bible.

The Noblest Spirit Is Most Strongly Attracted By The Love Of Glory.

To Be Sensual, I Think, Is To Respect And Rejoice In The Force Of Life, Of Life Itself, And To Be Present In All That One Does, From The Effort Of Loving To The Breaking Of Bread.

Even The Most Incorrigible Maverick Has To Be Born Somewhere. He May Leave The Group That Produced Him-he May Be Forced To-but Nothing Will Efface His Origins, The Marks Of Which He Carries With Him Everywhere. I Think It Is Important To Know This And Even Find It A Matter For Rejoicing, As The Strongest People Do, Regardless Of Their Station. On This Acceptance, Literally, The Life Of A Writer Depends.

The Real Victim Of Bigotry Is The White Man Who Hides His Weakness Under His Myth Of Superiority.

A Person Does Not Lightly Elect To Oppose His Society. One Would Much Rather Be At Home Among One's Compatriots Than Be Mocked And Detested By Them. And There Is A Level On Which The Mockery Of People, Even Their Hatred, Is Moving, Because It Is So Blind: It Is Terrible To Watch People Cling To Their Captivity And Insist On Their Own Destruction.

It Is Hard For Anyone Under Twenty To Realise That Death Has Already Assigned Them A Number, Which Is Going To Come Up One Day.

Be Careful What You Set Your Heart Upon - For It Will Surely Be Yours.

It Is Dangerous To Be An American Negro Male. America Has Never Wanted Its Negroes To Be Men, And Does Not, Generally, Treat Them As Men. It Treats Them As Mascots, Pets, Or Things.

The Great Force Of History Comes From The Fact That We Carry It Within Us, Are Unconsciously Controlled By It In Many Ways, And History Is Literally Present In All That We Do.

It Is A Very Grave Matter To Be Forced To Imitate A People For Whom You Know-which Is The Price Of Your Performance And Survival-you Do Not Exist. It Is Hard To Imitate A People Whose Existence Appears, Mainly, To Be Made Tolerable By Their Bottomless Gratitude That They Are Not, Thank Heaven, You.

God Be Thanked For Books! They Are The Voices Of The Distant And The Dead.

People Can't, Unhappily, Invent Their Mooring Posts, Their Lovers And Their Friends, Anymore Than They Can Invent Their Parents. Life Gives These And Also Takes Them Away And The Great Difficulty Is To Say Yes To Life.

I Think White Gay People Feel Cheated Because They Were Born, In Principle, In A Society In Which They Were Supposed To Be Safe. The Anomaly Of Their Sexuality Puts Them In Danger, Unexpectedly.

Life Is More Important Than Art; That's What Makes Art Important.

Whoever Is Born In New York Is Ill-equipped To Deal With Any Other City: All Other Cities Seem, At Best, A Mistake, And, At Worst, A Fraud. No Other City Is So Spitefully Incoherent.

I Love America More Than Any Other Country In The World, And, Exactly For This Reason, I Insist On The Right To Criticize Her Perpetually.

Life Is Tragic Simply Because The Earth Turns And The Sun Inexorably Rises And Sets, And One Day, For Each Of Us, The Sun Will Go Down For The Last, Last Time.

If You Are Going To Be A Writer There Is Nothing I Can Say To Stop You; If You're Not Going To Be A Writer Nothing I Can Say Will Help You. What You Really Need At The Beginning Is Somebody To Let You Know That The Effort Is Real.

In Overlooking, Denying, Evading This Complexity--which Is Nothing More Than The Disquieting Complexity Of Ourselves--we Are Diminished And We Perish; Only Within This Web Of Ambiguity, Paradox, This Hunger, Danger, Darkness, Can We Find At Once Ourselves And The Power That Will Free Us From Ourselves. It Is This Power Of Revelation That Is The Business Of The Novelist, This Journey Toward A More Vast Reality Which Must Take Precedence Over Other Claims.

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