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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
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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.
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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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Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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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.
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You write in order to change the world.
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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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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?
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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.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
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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.
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
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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.
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Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
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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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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.
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