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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
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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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We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
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I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
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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.
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The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
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Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.
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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.
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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.
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Employment is my right my destiny.
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There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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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.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
James A. Baldwin
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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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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James A. Baldwin
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.
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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.
James A. Baldwin