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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.
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At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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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.
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To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
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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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There are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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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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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
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When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.
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All racists are irresponsible.
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The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.
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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 power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
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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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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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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.
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It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.
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If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.
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