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cf5571d
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The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process"
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James Baldwin |
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e5f9c70
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It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being ... must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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James Baldwin |
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f00ab2d
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One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could ..
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racism
poverty
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James Baldwin |
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889ce70
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Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.
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James Baldwin |
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87fc3bd
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Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take comfort from this thought. Yet there knocked in his heart the suspicion that the bottom did not really exist.
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James Baldwin |
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990e9e9
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His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom--bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
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James Baldwin |
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2d69785
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But it's not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can't forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It's not possible to forget anybody you've destroyed.
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James Baldwin |
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1765f0c
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The rebirth of the soul is perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.
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James Baldwin |
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c0138aa
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It was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling.
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James Baldwin |
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9c3ce2b
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You don't know, and there's no way in the world for you to find out, what it's like to be a black girl in this world, and the way white men, and black men, too, baby, treat you.
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James Baldwin |
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433e43d
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People are full of surprise, even for themselves, if they have been stirred enough.
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James Baldwin |
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c260927
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I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.
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suicide
thoughts
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James Baldwin |
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d180624
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I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored. [...] The wind of my life was blowing me away. [...] I take the blue envelope...and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me.
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James Baldwin |
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14a49b3
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And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have been their help, didn't, as far as could be discovered, read either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn: in order to learn new attitudes.
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James Baldwin |
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ae0abe9
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It's a long way," John said slowly, "ain't it? It's a hard way. It's uphill all the way."
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James Baldwin |
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829d317
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It's astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body - the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too. You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.
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James Baldwin |
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b2b24cb
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In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge--revealed, in fact, that they..
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prejudice
white-liberals
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James Baldwin |
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85197af
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The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality--for this touchstone can be only oneself.
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James Baldwin |
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0156e6d
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I kissed her salty tears and murmured, murmured I don't know what. I felt her body straining, straining to meet mine and I felt my own contracting and drawing away and I knew that I had begun the long fall down.
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James Baldwin |
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fbc555c
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And yet - when one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds one-self pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors.
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James Baldwin |
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55c10eb
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All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever: it was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it.
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James Baldwin |
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4a2bc9f
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You don't know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write. But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep, really deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside.
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hope
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James Baldwin |
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806f5b2
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It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to lis..
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James Baldwin |
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2030089
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We stared at each other across a narrow space that was full of danger, that almost seemed to roar, like flame. 'Come,' he said.
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James Baldwin |
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3cdb8ea
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There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet."
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race-relations
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James Baldwin |
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945ce13
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Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.
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James Baldwin |
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8a605a4
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Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true - anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other - beneath the face of the beloved, however ancient, ruined, and scarred, is the face of the baby your love once was, and will always be, for you. Love serves, then, if memory doesn't, and
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passion
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James Baldwin |
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40e2ce4
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It doesn't do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.
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James Baldwin |
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dfdae9e
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If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it bring must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.
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James Baldwin |
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1859762
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The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other ..
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history
stranger-in-the-village
blackness
whiteness
whites
american-history
race-relations
race
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James Baldwin |
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bc691e0
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She was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyes off him nor look at him.
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James Baldwin |
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080f3e9
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To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.
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knowing-others
sense-of-self
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James Baldwin |
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72b9cd7
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I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in..
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social-justice
resignation
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James Baldwin |
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2528974
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In the realm of power, Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty--necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. This particular true faith, moreover, is more deeply concerned about the soul than it is about the body, to which fact the flesh (and the corpses) of countless infidels bears witness.
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war
hypocrisy
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James Baldwin |
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b60e555
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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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James Baldwin |
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d3c8558
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but the Atlantic Ocean is deep and wide and money doesn't hurry from the other side.
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James Baldwin |
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16a9035
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His touch could never fail to make me feel desire; yet his hot, sweet breath also made me want to vomit.
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James Baldwin |
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7870286
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I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris anyway. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. We will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and the sea and all of the glory of the stormy southern sky, into the mist and r..
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James Baldwin |
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fef938d
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Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together... Their relationship depended on her restraint... The premise of their affair, or the basis of their comedy, was that they were two independent people, who needed each other for a time, who would always be friends, ..
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lovers
relationships
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James Baldwin |
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3e76aef
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This past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful.
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James Baldwin |
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53c8458
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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who know that he is going under in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man.
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James Baldwin |
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16dfae0
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This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish.
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James Baldwin |
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76a5195
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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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fear
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James Baldwin |
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458324b
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I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?
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James Baldwin |