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3884bf0
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Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in his moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in himself--it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but boun..
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James Baldwin |
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e18e81c
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she was disquietingly fluid--fluid without, however, being able to flow. I felt a hardness and a constriction in her, a grave mistrust, created already by too many men like me ever to be conquered now.
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James Baldwin |
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4a28225
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The colors on the river faded, the rain began, and the river began to rise. It was apparent that the sun would soon give up the tremendous struggle it cost her to get to Paris for a few hours every day.
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James Baldwin |
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9da7c52
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In any event, the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems. These have been dealt with, when they have been dealt with at all, out of necessity--and in political terms, anyway, necessity means concessions made in order to stay on top.
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good-will
problems
avoidance
difficulties
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James Baldwin |
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dc504e0
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Take no one's word for anything, including mine - but trust your experience.
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locus-of-evaluation
phenomenology
self-trust
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James Baldwin |
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6ff042d
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all--a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named--but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.
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James Baldwin |
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23d3401
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Tell me,' he said, 'what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait. What are they waiting for?
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James Baldwin |
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e92e8b0
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Loving anybody and being loved by anybody is a tremendous danger, a tremendous responsibility. Loving of children, raising of children. The terrors homosexuals go through in this society would not be so great if the society itself did not go through so many terrors which it doesn't want to admit. The discovery of one's sexual preference doesn't have to be a trauma. It's a trauma because it's such a traumatized society.
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James Baldwin |
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6158be5
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All the western nations are caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism: this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.
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James Baldwin |
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9246980
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It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself -- that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable o..
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James Baldwin |
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8e674a5
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Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them; time reveals the foundations on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.
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James Baldwin |
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427ebc3
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I have been carried into precinct basements often enough, and I have seen and heard and endured the secrets of desperate white men and women, which they knew were safe with me, because even if I should speak, no one would believe me. And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.
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James Baldwin |
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09975ef
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And he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secret language she was telling him today something that he must remember and understand tomorrow. He watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, that he did not understand and that frightened him.
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James Baldwin |
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e91ea87
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The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power--and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live.
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James Baldwin |
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77fee28
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I thought she would be fun to have fun with.
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fun
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James Baldwin |
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39bae33
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Don't think I don't know you love me. You believe we going to make it?
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James Baldwin |
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48b6058
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. --The Price of the Ticket, "No Name in the Street" (1972; repr. 1985) The"
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James Baldwin |
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b55bd58
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And the darkness of John's sin was like the darkness of the church on Saturday evenings[...] It was like his thoughts as he moved about the tabernacle in which his life had been spent; the tabernacle that he hated, yet loved and feared[...] The darkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God's power; in the scorn that was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin glisten..
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imagery
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James Baldwin |
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93d6fe3
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Life, it is true, is a process of decisions and alternatives, the conscious awareness and acceptance of limitations. Experience, nevertheless, to say nothing of history, seems clearly to indicate that it is not possible to banish or to falsify any human need without ourselves undergoing falsification and loss.
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James Baldwin |
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b6662db
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There seems to be a vast amount of confusion in the Western world concerning these matters, but love and sexual activity are not synonymous: Only by becoming inhuman can the human being pretend that they are. The mare is not obliged to love the stallion, nor is the bull required to love the cow. They are doing what comes naturally.
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James Baldwin |
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8aa667f
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She marched into the street, found a liquor store and bought a bottle; and the weight of the bottle in her straw handbag somehow made everything real; as the purchase of a railroad ticket proves the imminence of a journey.
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James Baldwin |
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aecc107
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Observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire.
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James Baldwin |
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592bef2
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If men don't know what's happening, what they're doing, where they're going--what are women to do? If Richard doesn't know what kind of world he wants, how am I to help him make it? What am I to tell our sons?
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James Baldwin |
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5989b6f
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It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under.
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James Baldwin |
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3b091f3
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It is quite impossible to write a worth-while novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse, unhappily, to function in so neat and one-dimensional a fashion.
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James Baldwin |
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5f0d562
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Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap. It might be said, perhaps, that I had escaped, after all, I was a school teacher; or that Sonny had, he hadn't lived in Harlem for years. Yet, as the cab moved uptown through streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to ..
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James Baldwin |
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1955a9b
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It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
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James Baldwin |
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385b1c9
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But what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me? What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded.
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James Baldwin |
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5c25876
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Here was the South Side--a million in captivity--stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have 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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reading
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James Baldwin |
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c45f478
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Everything was as it had been between us, and at the same time everything was different.
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James Baldwin |
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f1166cc
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That was how I met her, in a bar in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, she was drinking and watching, and that was why I liked her, I thought she would be fun to have fun with.
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fun
love
meet
girl
drink
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James Baldwin |
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680c2a4
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In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.
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James Baldwin |
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8816637
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He wanted to go home and lock his door and sleep. He was tired of the troubles of real people. He wanted to get back to the people he was inventing, whose troubles he could bear.
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writing
writers
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James Baldwin |
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123305b
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She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb--upward, with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain.
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James Baldwin |
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bd1b46f
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I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.
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James Baldwin |
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428cb18
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The poor are always crossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen and all that crowd circle around the poor, exactly like vultures. Of course, they're not any richer than the poor, really, that's why they've turned into vultures, scavengers, indecent garbage men, and I'm talking about the black cats, too, who, in so many ways, are worse.
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James Baldwin |
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3fbbc9e
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but no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly.
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hatred
truth
fake-news
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James Baldwin |
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b7a891c
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Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
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James Baldwin |
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092e29d
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It's the only light we've got in all this darkness
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memorable
short-story
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James Baldwin |
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d2d0cac
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I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me.
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James Baldwin |
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8765426
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In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.
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James Baldwin |
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a1bc147
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It goes without saying, I believe, that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less.
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James Baldwin |
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e6ab875
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Sanirim iki insanin hem gulmesi hem sevismesi, guldukleri icin sevismeleri ve sevistikleri icin gulmeleri pek az rastlanir bir durumdur. Sevmek ve gulmek hep ayni yerden gelir de, o noktaya pek cok kisi erisemez.
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James Baldwin |
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06105dd
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Elisha,' he said, 'no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember - please remember - I was saved. I was there.
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saved
remember
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James Baldwin |