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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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Unless A Writer Is

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

To Act Is To Be Committed, And To Be Committed Is To Be In Danger.

Great Art Can Only Be Created Out Of Love.

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

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 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.

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

Black And White

You Go Into A Book And You're In The Dark, Really. You Go In With A Certain Fear And Trembling. You Know One Thing. You Know You Will Not Be The Same Person When This Voyage Is Over. But You Don't Know What's Going To Happen To You Between Getting On The Boat And Stepping Off.

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

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

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 Wretched Of The Earth Do Not Decide To Become Extinct, They Resolve, On The Contrary, To Multiply: Life Is Their Weapon Against Life, Life Is All That They Have.

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.

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

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.

Man Cannot Live By Profit Alone.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

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.

Writing Is A Political Instrument.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

And Love Will Simply Have No Choice But To Go Into Battle With Space And Time, And Furthermore, To Win.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Then I Buckled Up My Shoes, And I Started.

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.

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

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

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

Behind The Scenes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

American History Is Longer, Larger, More Various, More Beautiful, And More Terrible Than Anything Anyone Has Ever Said About It.

American History

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

African American

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps, As We Say In America, I Wanted To Find Myself. This Is An Interesting Phrase, Not Current As Far As I Know In The Language Of Any Other People, Which Certainly Does Not Mean What It Says But Betrays A Nagging Suspicion That Something Has Been Misplaced. I Think Now That If I Had Any Intimation That The Self I Was Going To Find Would Turn Out To Be Only The Same Self From Which I Had Spent So Much Time In Flight, I Would Have Stayed At Home.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

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

There 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Impossible Is The Least That One Can Demand.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

It Is Certain, In Any Case, That Ignorance, Allied With Power, Is The Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have.

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.

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.

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

There 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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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

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.

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Sarah Michelle Gellar

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