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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
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To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
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I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.
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It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
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Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
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Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.
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Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
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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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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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We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.
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You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
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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 you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.
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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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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.
James A. Baldwin