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After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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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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People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
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Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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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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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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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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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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But, when the chips are down, its better to be furious with someone you love, or frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.
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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
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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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It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.
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It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
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Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
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