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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Faith
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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Life is more important than art that's what makes art important.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament it was a matter of punishment and grief.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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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.
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The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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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.
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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.
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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
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The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.
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God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.
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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.
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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.
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