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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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Everyone Wishes To Be

James A. Baldwin

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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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More From James A. Baldwin

Experience Is A Private, Very Largely Speechless Affair.

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.

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

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

I Think Americans Are Terrified Of Feeling Anything. I Never Met A People More Infantile In My Life.

People Said That He Was Very Nice, But I Confess That His Utter Grotesqueness Made Me Uneasy; Perhaps In The Same Way That The Sight Of Monkeys Eating Their Own Excrement Turns Some People’s Stomachs. They Might Not Mind So Much If Monkeys Did Not- So Grotesquely- Resemble Human Beings.

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.

Falling In Love

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

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.

You've Got To Tell The World How To Treat You. If The World Tells You How You Are Going To Be Treated, You Are In Trouble.

If All You Want To Do Is Make Money, The Very Last Thing You Need Is Imagination.

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.

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.

The Price One Pays For Pursuing Any Profession Or Calling Is An Intimate Knowledge Of Its Ugly Side.

He May Be A Very Nice Man. But I Haven't Got The Time To Figure That Out. All I Know Is, He's Got A Uniform And A Gun And I Have To Relate To Him That Way. That's The Only Way To Relate To Him Because One Of Us May Have To Die.

Color Is Not A Human Or A Personal Reality; It Is A Political Reality.

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

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.

At Four O'clock In The Morning, When Everyone Is Drunk Enough, Then Extraordinary Things Can Happen.

When A Man Asks Himself What Is Meant By Action He Proves That He Isn't A Man Of Action. Action Is A Lack Of Balance. In Order To Act You Must Be Somewhat Insane. A Reasonably Sensible Man Is Satisfied With Thinking.

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

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

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.

The Past Is What Makes The Present Coherent, And The Past Will Remain Horrible For Exactly As Long As We Refuse To Assess It Honestly.

I Am What Time, Circumstance, History, Have Made Of Me, Certainly, But I Am Also, Much More Than That. So Are We All.

African American

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.

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

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. Whereas Other Cities Flaunt There History - Their Presumed Glory - In Vividly Placed Monuments, Squares, Parks, Plaques, And Boulevards, Such History As New York Has Been Unable Entirely To Obliterate Is To Be Found, Mainly, In The Backwaters Of Wall Street, In The Goat Tracks Of Old And West Broadway, In And Around Washington Square, And, For The Relentless Searcher, In Grimly Inaccessible Regions Of The Bronx.

... Every Human Being Is An Unprecedented Miracle.

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

To Be With God Is Really To Be Involved In Some Enormous, Overwhelming Desire, And Joy, And Power Which You Cannot Control, Which Controls You.

Overwhelming Desire

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.

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

Children Have Never Been Very Good At Listening To Their Elders, But They Have Never Failed To Imitate Them.

A Child Cannot Be Taught By Anyone Who Despises Him, And A Child Cannot Afford To Be Fooled.

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.

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

The Hope Of The World Lies In What One Demands, Not Of Others, But Of Oneself.

No One Can Possibly Know What Is About To Happen: It Is Happening, Each Time, For The First Time, For The Only Time.

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

Live In The Moment

Perhaps The Whole Root Of Our Trouble, The Human Trouble, Is That We Will Sacrifice All The Beauty Of Our Lives, Will Imprison Ourselves In Totems, Taboos, Crosses, Blood Sacrifices, Steeples, Mosques, Races, Armies, Flags, Nations, In Order To Deny The Fact Of Death, The Only Fact We Have. It Seems To Me That One Ought To Rejoice In The Fact Of Death - Ought To Decide, Indeed, To Earn One's Death By Confronting With Passion The Conundrum Of Life.

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

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.

You Took The Best, So Why Not Take The Rest?

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

African American

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.

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

African American

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. And At Such A Moment, Unable To See And Not Daring To Imagine What The Future Will Now Bring Forth, One Clings To What One Knew, Or Dreamed That One Possessed. Yet, It Is Only When A Man Is Able, Without Bitterness Or Self-pity, To Surrender A Dream He Has Long Cherished Or A Privilege He Has Long Possessed That He Is Set Free - He Has Set Himself Free - For Higher Dreams, For Greater Privileges.

Everything Now, We Must Assume, Is In Our Hands; We Have No Right To Assume Otherwise. If We Do Not Falter In Our Duty Now, We May Be Able, Handful That We Are, To End The Racial Nightmare, And Achieve Our Country, And Change The History Of The World.

I Can't Be A Pessimist, Because I Am Alive.

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

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.

If One Really Wishes To Know How Justice Is Administered In A Country, One Does Not Question The Policemen, The Lawyers, The Judges, Or The Protected Members Of The Middle Class. One Goes To The Unprotected - Those, Precisely, Who Need The Law's Protection Most! - And Listens To Their Testimony.

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

It Is Only Because The World Looks On His Talent With Such A Frightening Indifference That The Artist Is Compelled To Make His Talent Important.

Such Figures As Boy George Do Not Disturb Me Nearly So Much As Do Those Relentlessly Hetero (sexual?) Keepers Of The Keys And Seals, Those Who Know What The World Needs In The Way Of Order And Who Are Ready And Willing To Supply That Order.

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.

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

Most Of Us, No Matter What We Say, Are Walking In The Dark, Whistling In The Dark. Nobody Knows What Is Going To Happen To Him From One Moment To The Next, Or How One Will Bear It. This Is Irreducible. And It's True Of Everybody. Now, It Is True That The Nature Of Society Is To Create, Among Its Citizens, An Illusion Of Safety; But It Is Also Absolutely True That The Safety Is Always Necessarily An Illusion. Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

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.

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.

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.

Neither Love Nor Terror Makes One Blind: Indifference Makes One Blind.

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. I Think All Theories Are Suspect, That The Finest Principles May Have To Be Modified, Or May Even Be Pulverized By The Demands Of Life, And That One Must Find, Therefore, One's Own Moral Center And Move Through The World Hoping That This Center Will Guide One Aright.

All Over Harlem, Negro Boys And Girls Are Growing Into Stunted Maturity, Trying Desperately To Find A Place To Stand; And The Wonder Is Not That So Many Are Ruined But That So Many Survive.

Trust Life, And It Will Teach You, In Joy And Sorrow, All You Need To Know.

Any Writer, I Suppose, Feels That The World Into Which He Was Born Is Nothing Less Than A Conspiracy Against The Cultivation Of His Talent.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is Something Terribly Radical About Believing That One's Own Experience And Images Are Important Enough To Speak About, Much Less To Write About And To Perform

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.

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

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

To Defend Oneself Against A Fear Is Simply To Insure That One Will, One Day, Be Conquered By It; Fears Must Be Faced.

There Are Too Many Things We Do Not Wish To Know About Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

The Greatest Significance Of The Present Student Generation Is That It Is Through Them That The Point Of View Of The Subjugated Is Finally And Inexorably Being Expressed.

When One Begins To Live By Habit And By Quotation, One Has Begun To Stop Living.

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.

Unless A Writer Is Extremely Old When He Dies, In Which Case He Has Probably Become A Neglected Institution, His Death Must Always Be Seen As Untimely. This Is Because A Real Writer Is Always Shifting And Changing And Searching. The World Has Many Labels For Him, Of Which The Most Treacherous Is The Label Of Success.

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

The Impossible Is The Least That One Can Demand.

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

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.

If You're Treated A Certain Way You Become A Certain Kind Of Person. If Certain Things Are Described To You As Being Real They're Real For You Whether They're Real Or Not.

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.

Perhaps Home Is Not A Place But Simply An Irrevocable Condition.

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

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.

I Am Certainly Convinced That It Is One Of The Greatest Impulses Of Mankind To Arrive At Something Higher Than A Natural State.

We Have All Had The Experience Of Finding That Our Reactions And Perhaps Even Our Deeds Have Denied Beliefs We Thought Were Ours.

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.

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.

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

To Be Born In A Free Society And Not To Be Born Free Is To Be Born Into A Lie. To Be Told By Co-citizens And Co-christians That You Have No Value, No History, Have Never Done Anything That Is Worthy Of Human Respect Destroys You Because In The Beginning You Believe It.

The Universe, Which Is Not Merely The Stars And The Moon And The Planets, Flowers, Grass And Trees, But Other People, Has Evolved No Terms For Your Existence, Has Made No Room For You, And If Love Will Not Swing Wide The Gates, No Other Power Will Or Can. And If One Despairs-- As Who Has Not?-- Of Human Love, God's Love Alone Is Left.

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.

You Don't Realize That You're Intelligent Until It Gets You Into Trouble.

People Who Remember Court Madness Through Pain, The Pain Of The Perpetually Recurring Death Of Their Innocence; People Who Forget Court Another Kind Of Madness, The Madness Of The Denial Of Pain And The Hatred Of Innocence; And The World Is Mostly Divided Between Madmen Who Remember And Madmen Forget.

The Primary Distinction Of The Artist Is That He Must Actively Cultivate That State Which Most Men, Necessarily, Must Avoid: The State Of Being Alone.

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.

Sentimentality, The Ostentatious Parading Of Excessive And Spurious Emotion, Is The Mark Of Dishonesty...the Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist Betray His Aversion To Experience, His Fear Of Life, His Arid Heart; And It Is Always, Therefore, The Signal Of Secret And Violent Humanity, The Mark Of Cruelty.

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

It Is Impossible To Pretend That You Are Not Heir To, And Therefore, However Inadequately Or Unwillingly, Responsible To, And For, The Time And Place That Give You Life -- Without Becoming, At Very Best, A Dangerously Disoriented Human Being.

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.

In Order For This To Happen, Your Entire Frame Of Reference Will Have To Change, And You Will Be Forced To Surrender Many Things That You Now Scarcely Know You Have.

Frame Of Reference

Experience, Which Destroys Innocence, Also Leads One Back To It.

Fonny And I Just Sat There... While The Voices Of The Congregation Rose And Rose Around Us, Without Mercy... Teddy Had The Tambourine, And Gave The Cue To The Piano Player-i Never Got To Know Him: A Long Dark, Evil-looking Brother, With Hands Made For Strangling; And With These Hands He Attacked The Keyboard Like He Was Beating The Brains Out Of Someone He Remembered. No Doubt The Congregation Had Their Memories, Too, And They Went To Pieces. The Church Began To Rock.

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.

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.

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.

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

Motivational Sports

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

Man Cannot Live By Profit Alone.

It Comes As A Great Shock…to Discover That The Flag To Which You Have Pledged Allegiance…has Not Pledged Allegiance To You. It Comes As A Great Shock To See Gary Cooper Killing Off The Indians, And Although You Are Rooting For Gary Cooper, That The Indians Are You.

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.

One Day, To Everyone’s Astonishment, Someone Drops A Match In The Powder Keg And Everything Blows Up.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Everything In Life Depends On How That Life Accepts Its Limits.

One Writes Out Of One Thing Only - One's Own Experience. Everything Depends On How Relentlessly One Forces From This Experience The Last Drop, Sweet Or Bitter, It Can Possibly Give. This Is The Only Real Concern Of The Artist, To Recreate Out Of The Disorder Of Life That Order Which Is Art.

Hatred, Which Could Destroy So Much, Never Failed To Destroy The Man Who Hated, And This Was An Immutable Law.

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.

No Man Is A Devil In His Own Mind.

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

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.

If The Relationship Of Father To Son Could Really Be Reduced To Biology, The Whole Earth Would Blaze With The Glory Of Fathers And Sons.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hatred Destroys The Person Who Hates.

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

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 Seem To Believe That The Country Was Founded By A Band Of Heroes Who Wanted To Be Free.

We Are Very Cruelly Trapped Between What We Would Like To Be And What We Actually Are. And We Cannot Possibly Become What We Would Like To Be Until We Are Willing To Ask Ourselves Just Why The Lives We Lead On This Continent Are Mainly So Empty, So Tame, And So Ugly.

These Boys, Now, Were Living As We'd Been Living Then, They Were Growing Up With A Rush And Their Heads Bumped Abruptly Against The Low Ceiling Of Their Actual Possibilities. They Were Filled With Rage. All They Really Knew Were Two Darknesses, The Darkness Of Their Lives, Which Were Now Closing In On Them, And The Darkness Of The Movies, Which Had Blinded Them To That Other Darkness, And In Which They Now, Vindictively, Dreamed, At Once More Together Than They Were At Any Other Time, And More Alone.

Art Has To Be A Kind Of Confession. I Don't Mean A True Confession In The Sense Of That Dreary Magazine. The Effort It Seems To Me, Is: If You Can Examine And Face Your Life, You Can Discover The Terms With Which You Are Connected To Other Lives, And They Can Discover Them, Too - The Terms With Which They Are Connected To Other People.

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.

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

The Writer's Greed Is Appalling. He Wants, Or Seems To Want, Everything And Practically Everybody, In Another Sense, And At The Same Time, He Needs No One At All.

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

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.

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

One Is Responsible To Life: It Is The Small Beacon In That Terrifying Darkness From Which We Come And To Which We Shall Return.

Being In The Pulpit, Was Like Being In The Theatre; I Was Behind The Scenes And Knew How The Illusion Worked.

Behind The Scenes

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.

Great Art Can Only Be Created Out Of Love.

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.

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

Writing Is A Political Instrument.

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.

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.

One Cannot Deny The Humanity Of Another Without Diminishing One's Own.

Americans, Unhappily, Have The Most Remarkable Ability To Alchemize All Bitter Truths Into An Innocuous But Piquant Confection And To Transform Their Moral Contradictions, Or Public Discussion Of Such Contradictions, Into A Proud Decoration, Such As Are Given For Heroism On The Field Of Battle.

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.

Fires Can't Be Made With Dead Embers, Nor Can Enthusiasm Be Stirred By Spiritless Men. Enthusiasm In Our Daily Work Lightens Effort And Turns Even Labor Into Pleasant Tasks.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

A Devotion To Humanity Is... Too Easily Equated With A Devotion To A Cause, And Causes, As We Know, Are Notoriously Bloodthirsty.

When The South Has Trouble With Its Negroes - When The Negroes Refuse To Remain In Their "place" - It Blames "outside Agitators" And "northern Interference." When The Nation Has Trouble With The Northern Negro, It Blames The Kremlin.

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

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

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

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?

In My Case, I Think My Exile Saved My Life, For It Inexorably Confirmed Something Which Americans Appear To Have Great Difficulty Accepting. Which Is, Simply, This: A Man Is Not A Man Until He Is Able And Willing To Accept His Own Vision Of The World, No Matter How Radically This Vision Departs From Others.

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

There Was No Room In God's Army For The Coward Heart, No Crown Awaiting Him Who Put Mother Or Father, Sister Or Brother, Sweetheart Or Friend Above God's Will. Let The Church Cry Amen To This!

All I Know About Music Is That Not Many People Ever Really Hear It.

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

Sometimes You Hear A Person Speak The Truth And You Know That They Are Speaking The Truth. But You Also Know That They Have Not Heard Themselves, Do Not Know What They Have Said: Do Not Know That They Have Revealed Much More Than They Have Said. This May Be Why The Truth Remains, On The Whole, So Rare.

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.

I'm Not Interested In Anybody's Guilt. Guilt Is A Luxury That We Can No Longer Afford. I Know You Didn't Do It, And I Didn't Do It Either, But I Am Responsible For It Because I Am A Man And A Citizen Of This Country And You Are Responsible For It, Too, For The Very Same Reason... Anyone Who Is Trying To Be Conscious Must Begin To Dismiss The Vocabulary Which We've Used So Long To Cover It Up, To Lie About The Way Things Are.

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.

A Ghetto Can Be Improved In One Way Only: Out Of Existence.

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

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

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.

Nobody Is More Dangerous Than He Who Imagines Himself Pure In Heart; For His Purity, By Definition, Is Unassailable.

We Cannot Discuss The State Of Our Minorities Until We First Have A Sense Of What We Are, Who We Are, What Our Goals Are, And What We Take Life To Be.

I Don't Know, Now, When I First Looked At Hella And Found Her Stale, Found Her Body Uninteresting, Her Presence Grating. It Seemed To Happen All At Once—i Suppose That Only Means That It Had Been Happening For A Long Time.

You Want To Write A Sentence As Clean As A Bone. That Is The Goal.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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