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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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I Began Plotting Novels

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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

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

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.

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

African American

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.

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.

Yet I Also Suspected That What I Was Seeing Was But A Part Of The Truth And Perhaps Not Even The Most Important Part; Beneath These Faces, These Clothes, Accents, Rudenesses, Was Power And Sorrow, Both Unadmitted, Unrealized, The Power Of Inventors, The Sorrow Of The Disconnected.

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.

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.

Not Only Was I Not Born To Be A Slave; I Was Not Born To Hope To Become The Equal Of The Slave Master.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

There Are So Many Ways Of Being Despicable It Quite Makes One’s Head Spin. But The Way To Be Really Despicable Is To Be Contemptuous Of Other People’s Pain.

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.

The Purpose Of Art Is To Lay Bare The Questions That Have Been Hidden By The Answers.

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

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

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

A Writer Has To Take All The Risks Of Putting Down What He Sees.

Unless A Writer Is Extremely Old When He Dies, In Which Case He Has Probably Become A Neglected Institution, His Death Must Always Seem Untimely.

When The Book Comes Out It May Hurt You - But In Order For Me To Do It, It Had To Hurt Me First. I Can Only Tell You About Yourself As Much As I Can Face About Myself.

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.

Words Like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" Are Not Common Concepts; On The Contrary, They Are Rare. People Are Not Born Knowing What These Are. It Takes Enormous And, Above All, Individual Effort To Arrive At The Respect For Other People That These Words Imply.

Individual Effort

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

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.

Writing Is A Political Instrument.

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.

People Are Too Various To Be Treated So Lightly. I Am Too Various To Be Trusted.

I Remember Standing On A Street Corner With The Black Painter Beauford Delaney Down In The Village, Waiting For The Light To Change, And He Pointed Down And Said, 'look.' I Looked And All I Saw Was Water. And He Said, 'look Again,' Which I Did, And I Saw Oil On The Water And The City Reflected In The Puddle. It Was A Great Revelation To Me. I Can't Explain It. He Taught Me How To See, And How To Trust What I Saw. Painters Have Often Taught Writers How To See. And Once You've Had That Experience, You See Differently.

In The Invincible And Indescribable Squalor Of Harlem ... I Was Tormented. I Felt Caged, Like An Animal. I Wanted To Escape. I Felt If I Did Not Get Out I Would Slowly Strangle.

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.

The Moment We Break Faith With One Another, The Sea Engulfs Us And The Light Goes Out.

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.

Then I Buckled Up My Shoes, And I Started.

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.

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.

It Was As Though We Were A Picture, Trapped In Time: This Had Been Happening For Hundreds Of Years, People Sitting In A Room, Waiting For Dinner, And Listening To The Blues.

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.

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

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.

Each Of Us, Helplessly And Forever, Contains The Other - Male In Female, Female In Male, White In Black, And Black In White. We Are Part Of Each Other. Many Of My Countrymen Appear To Find This Fact Exceedingly Inconvenient And Even Unfair, And So, Very Often, Do I. But None Of Us Can Do Anything About It.

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

I Want To Be An Honest Man And A Good Writer.

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. One Is Responsible To Life: It Is The Small Beacon In That Terrifying Darkness From Which We Come And To Which We Shall Return. One Must Negotiate This Passage As Nobly As Possible, For The Sake Of Those Who Are Coming After Us.

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.

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.

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

You Think Your Pain And Your Heartbreak Are Unprecedented In The History Of The World, But Then You Read.

The White Man Discovered The Cross By Way Of The Bible, But The Black Man Discovered The Bible By Way Of The Cross.

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.

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

Behind The Scenes

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.

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.

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

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

Voyagers Discover That The World Can Never Be Larger Than The Person That Is In The World; But It Is Impossible To Foresee This, It Is Impossible To Be Warned.

All Of Us Know, Whether Or Not We Are Able To Admit It, That Mirrors Can Only Lie, That Death By Drowning Is All That Awaits One There. It Is For This Reason That Love Is So Desperately Sought And So Cunningly Avoided. Love Takes Off The Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I Started Reading. I Read Everything I Could Get My Hands On...by The Time I Was Thirteen I Had Read Myself Out Of Harlem. I Had Read Every Book In Two Libraries And Had A Card For The Forty-second Street Branch.

It Is A Terrible, An Inexorable, Law That One Cannot Deny The Humanity Of Another Without Diminishing One's Own: In The Face Of One's Victim, One Sees Oneself.

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.

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

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.

Negro Servants Have Been Smuggling Odds And Ends Out Of White Homes For Generations, And White People Have Been Delighted To Have Them Do It, Because It Has Assuaged A Dim Guilt And Testified To The Intrinsic Superiority Of White People.

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

Passion Is Not Friendly. It Is Arrogant, Superbly Contemptuous Of All That Is Not Itself, And, As They Very Definition Of Passion Implies The Impulse To Freedom, It Has A Might Intimidiating Power. It Contains A Challenge. It Contains An Unspeakable Hope.

People Can Cry Much Easier Than They Can Change.

Self Improvement

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.

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

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

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.

You Think Your Pains And Heartbreaks Are Unprecedented In The History Of The World, But Then You Read. [and Then You Discover That Others Have Suffered Much More Than You And Your Problems Look Good In Comparison]

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.

European Society Has Always Been Divided Into Classes In A Way That American Society Never Has Been. A European Writer Considers Himself To Be Part Of An Old And Honorable Tradition--of Intellectual Activity, Of Letters--and His Choice Of A Vocation Does Not Cause Him Any Uneasy Wonder As To Whether Or Not It Will Cost Him All His Friends. But This Tradition Does Not Exist In America.

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

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.

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

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.

Hatred Is Always Self Hatred, And There Is Something Suicidal About It.

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!

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.

There Are, Forever, Swamps To Be Drained, Cities To Be Created, Mines To Be Exploited, Children To Be Fed ... But The Conquest Of The Physical World Is Not Man’s Only Duty. He Is Also Enjoined To Conquer The Great Wilderness Of Himself. The Precise Role Of The Artist, Then, Is To Illuminate That Darkness, Blaze Roads Through Vast Forests, So That We Will Not, In All Our Doing, Lose Sight Of Its Purpose, Which Is, After All, To Make The World A More Human Dwelling Place.

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

To Ask Questions Of The Universe, And Then Learn To Live With Those Questions, Is The Way He Achieves His Own Identity.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

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.

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

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.

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.

This World Is White No Longer, And It Will Never Be White Again.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

But To Look Back From The Stony Plain Along The Road Which Led One To That Place Is Not At All The Same Thing As Walking On The Road; The Perspective To Say The Very Least, Changes Only With The Journey; Only When The Road Has, All Abruptly And Treacherously, And With An Absoluteness That Permits No Argument, Turned Or Dropped Or Risen Is One Able To See All That One Could Not Have Seen From Any Other Place.

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.

Society Is Held Together By Our Need; We Bind It Together With Legend, Myth, Coercion, Fearing That Without It We Will Be Hurled Into That Void, Within Which, Like The Earth Before The Word Was Spoken, The Foundations Of Society Are Hidden.

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

I Must Oppose Any Attempt That Negroes May Make To Do To Others What Has Been Done To Them. . . . I Know The Spiritual Wasteland To Which That Road Leads . . . Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

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

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

I'm Beginning To Think That Maybe Everything That Happens Makes Sense. Like, If It Didn't Make Sense, How Could It Happen?

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.

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.

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.

Love Does Not Begin And End The Way We Seem To Think It Does. Love Is A Battle, Love Is A War; Love Is A Growing Up.

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.

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.

Money, It Turned Out, Was Exactly Like Sex, You Thought Of Nothing Else If You Didn't Have It And Thought Of Other Things If You Did.

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.

If You Really Want To Know Something About Solitude, Become Famous.

Employment Is My Right My Destiny.

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.

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.

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 Will No Longer Take Anyone's Word For My Experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We Can Make America What America Must Become.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

People Are Continually Pointing Out To Me The Wretchedness Of White People In Order To Console Me For The Wretchedness Of Blacks. But An Itemized Account Of The American Failure Does Not Console Me And It Should Not Console Anyone Else. That Hundreds Of Thousands Of White People Are Living, In Effect, No Better Than The "niggers" Is Not A Fact To Be Regarded With Complacency. The Social And Moral Bankruptcy Suggested By This Fact Is Of The Bitterest, Most Terrifying Kind.

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

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

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.

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.

Experience Is A Private, Very Largely Speechless Affair.

A Civilization Is Not Destroyed By Wicked People; It Is Not Necessary That People Be Wicked But Only That They Be Spineless.

You Have To Decide Who You Are And Force The World To Deal With You, Not With Its Idea Of You.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

The States Of Birth, Suffering, Love, And Death, Are Extreme States: Extreme, Universal, And Inescapable. We All Know This, But We Would Rather Not Know It. The Artist Is Present To Correct The Delusions To Which We Are All Prey In Our Attempts To Avoid This Knowledge." - James Baldwin, "the Creative Process

To Accept One’s Past – One’s History – Is Not The Same Thing As Drowning In It; It Is Learning How To Use It. An Invented Past Can Never Be Used; It Cracks And Crumbles Under The Pressures Of Life Like Clay In A Season Of Drought.

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.

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

There Is A 'sanctity' Involved With Bringing A Child Into This World: It Is Better Than Bombing One Out Of It.

You Write In Order To Change The World.

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

The Victim Who Is Able To Articulate The Situation Of The Victim Has Ceased To Be A Victim: He Or She Has Become A Threat.

White People Will Have Quite Enough To Do In Learning How To Accept And Love Themselves And Each Other, And When They Have Achieved This - Which Will Not Be Tomorrow And May Very Well Be Never - The Negro Problem Will No Longer Exist, For It Will No Longer Be Needed.

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