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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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Whatever You Describe To

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Black And White

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

No Man Is A Devil In His Own Mind.

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.

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

The World Tends To Trap You In The Role You Play And It Is Always Extremely Hard To Maintain A Watchful, Mocking Distance Between Oneself As One Appears To Be And Oneself As One Actually Is.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

Frame Of Reference

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If 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.

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 Imagine One Of The Reasons People Cling To Their Hates So Stubbornly Is Because They Sense, Once Hate Is Gone, They Will Be Forced To Deal With Pain.

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.

Man Cannot Live By Profit Alone.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You Write In Order To Change The World.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Whoever Is Born In New York Is Ill-equipped To Deal With Any Other City: All Other Cities Seem, At Best, A Mistake, And, At Worst, A Fraud. No Other City Is So Spitefully Incoherent. Whereas Other Cities Flaunt There History - Their Presumed Glory - In Vividly Placed Monuments, Squares, Parks, Plaques, And Boulevards, Such History As New York Has Been Unable Entirely To Obliterate Is To Be Found, Mainly, In The Backwaters Of Wall Street, In The Goat Tracks Of Old And West Broadway, In And Around Washington Square, And, For The Relentless Searcher, In Grimly Inaccessible Regions Of The Bronx.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To Hold In The Mind Forever Two Ideas Which Seemed To Be In Opposition. The First . . . Acceptance Totally Without Rancor, Of Life As It Is, And Men As They Are [;] . . . The Second . . . That One Must Never, In One's Life, Accept . . . Injustices As Commonplace But Must Fight Them With All One's Strength.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

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

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

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

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.

The World Is Before You, And You Need Not Take It Or Leave It As It Was When You Came In.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

African American

It Is 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

American History

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

People Who Shut Their Eyes To Reality Simply Invite Their Own Destruction, And Anyone Who Insists On Remaining In A State On Innocence Long After That Innocence Is Dead Turns Himself Into A Monster.

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.

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

Black And White

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

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

Experience Is A Private, Very Largely Speechless Affair.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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