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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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Whoever Is Born In

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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.

We All Commit Our Crimes. The Thing Is To Not Lie About Them -- To Try To Understand What You Have Done, Why You Have Done It. That Way, You Can Begin To Forgive Yourself. That's Very Important. If You Don't Forgive Yourself You'll Never Be Able To Forgive Anybody Else And You'll Go On Committing The Same Crimes Forever.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

It Happened, As Many Things Do, Imperceptibly, In Many Ways At Once. I Date It - The Slow Crumbling Of My Faith, The Pulverization Of My Fortress - From The Time, About A Year After I Had Begun To Preach, When I Began To Read Again. I Justified This Desire By The Fact That I Was Still In School, And I Began, Fatally, With Dostoyevsky.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

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.

An American Negro, However Deep His Sympathies, Or However Bright His Rage, Ceases To Be Simply A Black Man When He Faces A Black Man From Africa.

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

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

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.

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

The Civilized Have Created The Wretched, Quite Coldly And Deliberately, And Do Not Intend To Change The Status Quo; Are Responsible For Their Slaughter And Enslavement; Rain Down Bombs On Defenseless Children Whenever And Wherever They Decide That Their "vital Interests" Are Menaced, And Think Nothing Of Torturing A Man To Death: These People Are Not To Be Taken Seriously When They Speak Of The "sanctity" Of Human Life, Or The "conscience" Of The Civilized World.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

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

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

I 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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

We Can Make America What America Must Become.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Great Art Can Only Be Created Out Of Love.

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

It 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.

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.

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.

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

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

... Every Human Being Is An Unprecedented Miracle.

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.

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

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.

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.

You Write In Order To Change The World.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 A Great Shock At The Age Of Five Or Six To Find That In A World Of Gary Coopers You Are The Indian.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

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.

The Determination To Outwit One's Situation Means That One Has No Models, Only Object Lessons.

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Behind The Scenes

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.

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.

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

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.

No One Knows Very Much About The Life Of Another. This Ignorance Becomes Vivid, If You Love Another. Love Sets The Imagination On Fire, And, Also, Eventually, Chars The Imagination Into A Harder Element: Imagination Cannot Match Love, Cannot Plunge So Deep, Or Range So Wide.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Employment Is My Right My Destiny.

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

A Real Writer Is Always Shifting And Changing And Searching.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

People Can Cry Much Easier Than They Can Change.

Self Improvement

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

If You Are Going To Be A Writer There Is Nothing I Can Say To Stop You; If You're Not Going To Be A Writer Nothing I Can Say Will Help You. What You Really Need At The Beginning Is Somebody To Let You Know That The Effort Is Real.

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

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.

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.

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

Then I Buckled Up My Shoes, And I Started.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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