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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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There Are, Forever, Swamps

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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.

You Write In Order To Change The World.

The Impossible Is The Least That One Can Demand.

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.

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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.

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

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

No Man Is A Devil In His Own Mind.

Great Art Can Only Be Created Out Of Love.

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.

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.

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

It Is Perfectly Possible To Be Enamoured Of Paris While Remaining Totally Indifferent Or Even Hostile To The French.

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

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.

Hatred Destroys The Person Who Hates.

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.

A Liberal: Someone Who Thinks He Knows More About Your Experience Than You Do.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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If You Think Too Far Ahead, If You Even Try To Think Too Far Ahead, You'll Never Make It.

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

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

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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.

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

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

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The American Idea Of Racial Progress Is Measured By How Fast I Become White.

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

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

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

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Black And White

Love Takes Off Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within.

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

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

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'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.

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

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.

... Every Human Being Is An Unprecedented Miracle.

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.

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

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

Please Try To Remember That What They Believe, As Well As What They Do And Cause You To Endure Does Not Testify To Your Inferiority But To Their Inhumanity

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Pessimists Are The People Who Have No Hope For Themselves Or For Others. Pessimists Are Also People Who Think The Human Race Is Beneath Their Notice, That They're Better Than Other Human Beings.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Interior Life Is A Real Life, And The Intangible Dreams Of People Have A Tangible Effect On The World.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Rage Can Only With Difficulty, And Never Entirely, Be Brought Under The Domination Of The Intelligence, And Therefore Is Not Susceptible To Any Arguments Whatsoever.

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.

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.

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.

Those Kids Aren't Dumb. But The People Who Run These Schools Want To Make Sure They Don't Get Smart: They Are Really Teaching The Kids To Be Slaves.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 Is No Way Of Conveying To The Corpse The Reasons You Have Made Him One--you Have The Corpse, And You Are, Thereafter, At Themercy Of A Fact Which Missed The Truth, Which Means That The Corpse Has You.

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.

Employment Is My Right My Destiny.

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.

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.

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.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

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

Live In The Moment

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

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.

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 Man's Balance Depends On The Weight He Carries Between His Legs.

Yr Crown Has Been Bought And Paid For. All You Have To Do Is Put It On Yr Head

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Artistic Image Is Not Intended To Represent The Thing Itself, But, Rather, The Reality Of The Force The Thing Contains.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

People Can Cry Much Easier Than They Can Change.

Self Improvement

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.

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.

Societies Never Know It, But The War Of An Artist With His Society Is A Lover's War, And He Does, At His Best, What Lovers Do, Which Is To Reveal The Beloved To Himself And, With That Revelation, To Make Freedom Real.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

African American

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Women Manage, Quite Brilliantly, On The Whole, And To Stunning And Unforeseeable Effect, To Survive And Surmount Being Defined By Others. They Dismiss The Definition, However Dangerous Or Wounding It May Be-- Or Even, Sometimes, Find A Way To Utilize It.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Male Cannot Bear Very Much Humiliation; And He Really Cannot Bear It, It Obliterates Him.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

Not Everything That Is Faced Can Be Changed. But Nothing Can Be Changed Until It Is Faced.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Confusion Is A Luxury Which Only The Very, Very Young Can Possibly Afford And You Are Not That Young Anymore

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Edward Fitzgerald

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