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da9a837
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He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him. They were all named, more or less, all more or less destined, the pattern he wished them to describe was clear to him. But it did not seem clear to them. He could move them about but they themselves did not move. He put words in their mouths which they uttered sullenly, unconvinced. With the same agony, or greater, with which he attempted to seduce..
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James Baldwin |
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0eb18b7
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Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn."
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James Baldwin |
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7bef969
|
The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant. Or--as they are, indeed, already, in all but actual fact: obsolete. For, if trouble don't last always, as the Preacher tells us, neither does Power, and it is on the fact or the hope or the myth of Power that that identity which calls itself White has always seemed to depend.
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racism
obsolescence
whites
relevance
race-relations
race
power
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James Baldwin |
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2b0acab
|
When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father's bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father ..
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racism
fathers
family
whites
bitterness
sons
race-relations
race
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James Baldwin |
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84f931f
|
It is said that [Shakespeare's] time was easier than ours, but I doubt it--no time can be easy if one is living through it.
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shakespeare
living
hard-times
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James Baldwin |
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0c3789a
|
Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then: "I wonder why." ... Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road--and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright--and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. ... Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers th..
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madness
pain
heroes
strength
life-choices
innocence-lost
garden-of-eden
innocence
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James Baldwin |
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126c68a
|
Nobody can stay in the Garden of Eden.
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truth
move-on
paradise
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James Baldwin |
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2340489
|
Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen.
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love-quotes
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James Baldwin |
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8f320b6
|
We had our arms round each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.
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James Baldwin |
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138fd7b
|
Time could not be bought. The only coin time accepted was life.
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James Baldwin |
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800a860
|
Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker," said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, "and so you can stand less and less."
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life
weakened
weaker
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
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James Baldwin |
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ab05cbd
|
You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone--and you tell nothing but lies. What are you always hiding? And do you think I did not know when you made love to me, you were making love to no one? No one! Or everyone--but not me, certainly. I am nothing to you, nothing, and you bring me fever but no delight.
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James Baldwin |
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2dc955c
|
Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody - if it is, God's days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve- and do serve, in ways that they don't know- has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man. Or: if you were.
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James Baldwin |
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36690c0
|
He smiled, "Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home." He played with my thumb and grinned. " ?" "Beautiful logic," I said. "You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there?" He laughed. "Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you nev..
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giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
paradox
home
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James Baldwin |
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b9043df
|
To be liberated from the stigma of blackness by embracing it is to cease, forever, one's interior argument and collaboration with the authors of one's degradation. It abruptly reduces the white enemy to a contest merely physical, which he can win only physically.
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no-name-in-the-street
post-imperialism
james-baldwin
imperialism
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James Baldwin |
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8775f54
|
In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it
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harlem
police-brutality
negro
discrimination
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James Baldwin |
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e2b7299
|
But I know about suffering; if that helps. I know that it ends. I ain't going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. Sometimes it ends for the worse. You can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can't ever suffer again: and that's worse.
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James Baldwin |
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2bacde8
|
I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attache..
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James Baldwin |
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fed2da0
|
If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.
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self-knowledge
travel
sense-of-self
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James Baldwin |
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3e8c642
|
For the rebirth of the soul was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.
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James Baldwin |
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c61fa26
|
And her mother still struggled in these white kitchens in town, humming sweet hymns, tiny, mild eyed and bent, her father still labored on the oyster boats; after a lifetime of labor, should they drop dead tomorrow, there would not be a penny for their burial clothes.
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James Baldwin |
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2ac96e2
|
It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) 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..
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James Baldwin |
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7bc0daf
|
Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are s..
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racism
equality
reality
race-relations
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James Baldwin |
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123395d
|
The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks--the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind.
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James Baldwin |
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b6184c5
|
And the reason for this ignorance is that a knowledge of the role these people played--and play--in American life would reveal more about America to Americans than Americans wish to know. The
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James Baldwin |
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fcfe979
|
The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes--I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether--is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened.
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James Baldwin |
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8bf7278
|
A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other. He reacts to the fear in his parents' voices because his parents hold up the world for him and he has no protection without them.
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James Baldwin |
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fce8d09
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From my own point of view, the fact of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete forever any question of Christian superiority, except in technological terms. White
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James Baldwin |
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058d020
|
Tell me...is there really no other way for you but this? To kneel down forever before an army of boys for just five dirty minutes in the dark? Think...of the men who have kneeled before you while you thought of something else and pretended that nothing was happening down there in the dark between your legs.
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James Baldwin |
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fa829b3
|
Why no," he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, "we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until closing time. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until tomorrow, only that means that you must come in here tomorrow and perhaps you have something else to do." He put his watch away and leaned both elbows on the bar. "Tell me," he said, "what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be ..
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James Baldwin |
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12b4a38
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In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived, had no moral ground on which to stand. They had the judges, the juries, the shotguns, the law--in a word, power. But it was a criminal power, to be feared but not respected, and to be outwitted in any way whatever. And those virtues preached but not practiced by the white world were merely another means of holdi..
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James Baldwin |
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e11791e
|
I did not tell him my decision, that would have broken my will. I did not wait to have breakfast with him but only drank some coffee and made an excuse to go home. I knew the excuse did not fool Joey; but he did not know how to protest or insist; he did not know that this was all he needed to have done. Then I, who had seen him that summer nearly every day till then, no longer went to see him. He did not come to see me. I would have been ve..
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James Baldwin |
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30b6e3e
|
My novel's about Brooklyn." "The tree? Or the kids or the murderers or the junkies?" Vivaldo swallowed. "All of them." "That's quite an assignment. And if you don't mind my saying so, it sounds just a little bit old fashioned." He put his hand before his mouth and burped. "Brooklyn's been done. And done."
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writing
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James Baldwin |
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507b6af
|
The vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live.
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heaven
religion
wishful-thinking
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James Baldwin |
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d3883a3
|
The real troubles with living is that living is so banal.
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living
life
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James Baldwin |
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e32d2f8
|
In the Negro world, as in the white world, Negroes who have money band together and try to ignore the existence of their unluckier brothers. That is the way the love of money works. But neither money, nor the love of it, is the root of all evil. The importance of money is simply that power in the world does not exist without it and power in the world is what almost everyone would like to have.
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James Baldwin |
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d425eba
|
Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say. I
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James Baldwin |
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f149229
|
It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant--birth, struggle, and death are constant, and so is love, though we may not always think so--and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths--change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not--safety, for example, or mon..
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James Baldwin |
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1a4d873
|
It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.
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James Baldwin |
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4f96cd7
|
Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.
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James Baldwin |
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7c980ee
|
And his mind could not contain the terrible stretch of time that united twelve men fishing by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on their knees tonight, and he, a witness.
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James Baldwin |
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fb2546b
|
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
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James Baldwin |
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9e27145
|
I am not trying to be mechant when I talk about women. I respect women--very much--for their inside life, which is not like the life of a man.
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James Baldwin |
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a19bb7a
|
There is nothing more boring, anyway, than sexual activity as an end in itself, and a great many people who came out of the closet should reconsider.
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James Baldwin |