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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.
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The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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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.
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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.
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One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
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The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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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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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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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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The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.
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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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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
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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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The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
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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.
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Not only was I not born to be a slave I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.
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I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
James A. Baldwin