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After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
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The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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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.
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The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
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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.
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