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d1c0f35
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You stop that,' he said, in a voice which he did not recognise. 'You stop that. You stop trying to kill me. It's not my fault I'm white. It's not my fault you're black. It's not my fault he's dead.
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James Baldwin |
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f1911d5
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What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the jobless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far..
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James Baldwin |
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66ff040
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Nothing ever goes away
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James Baldwin |
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67269aa
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I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel 6 covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, 7 I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeams dance Against my shady shallows.
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James Baldwin |
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54b7891
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I moved, looking for a cigarette. They were in my hand. I lit one. In a moment, I thought, I will say something. I will say something and then I will walk out of this room forever.
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leaving
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James Baldwin |
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5ab37ac
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Afro-Americans. Which is but a wedding, however, of two confusions, an arbitrary linking of two undefined and currently undefinable proper nouns. I mean that, in the case of Africa, Africa is still chained to Europe, and exploited by Europe, and Europe and America are chained together; and as long as this is so, it is hard to speak of Africa except as a cradle and a potential. Not until the many millions of people on the continent of Africa..
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no-name-in-the-street
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James Baldwin |
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f3c4899
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But the Negro's experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live.
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James Baldwin |
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13554e6
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Nevertheless, beneath me--along the river bank, beneath the bridges, in the shadow of the walls, I could almost hear the collective, shivering sigh--were lovers and ruins, sleeping, embracing, coupling, drinking, staring out at the descending night. Behind the walls of the houses I passed, the French nation was clearing away the dishes, putting little Jean Pierre and Marie to bed, scowling over the eternal problems of the sou, the shop, the..
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James Baldwin |
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7336995
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The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it.
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James Baldwin |
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13734e3
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Ages ago, in another city, on another bus, I sat so at the windows, looking outward, inventing for each flying face which trapped my brief attention some life, some destiny, in which I played a part. I was looking for some whisper, or promise, of my possible salvation. But it seemed to me that morning that my ancient self had been dreaming the most dangerous dream of all.
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James Baldwin |
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5335626
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When my fingers began, involuntarily, to loose their hold on Hella, I realized that I was dangling from a high place and that I had been clinging to her for my very life. With each moment, as my fingers slipped, I felt the roaring air beneath me and felt everything in me bitterly contracting, crawling furiously upward against that long fall.
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James Baldwin |
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1a8e01e
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I must believe, I must believe, that the heavy grace of God, which has brought me to this point, is all that can carry me out of it.
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James Baldwin |
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63d7549
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John looked with a child's impenetrable gravity into the preacher's face, as though he were turning this question over in his mind and would answer when he had thought it
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James Baldwin |
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c662fb5
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We go down the hall again, thank heaven, to my drink.
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drink
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James Baldwin |
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92fa66d
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To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger.
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James Baldwin |
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12e93c3
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What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?
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James Baldwin |
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ecd4cc1
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If your countrymen think that privacy is a crime, so much the worse for your country.
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James Baldwin |
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7620ee3
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Confession Who knows more of Wanda, the wan, than I do? And who knows more of Terry, the torn, than I do? And who knows more than I do of Ziggy, the Zap, fleeing the rap, using his eyes and teeth to spring the trap, than I do! Or did. Good Lord, forbid that morning's acre, held in the palm
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James Baldwin |
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8fc1487
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It was as though I were yelling up to Heaven and Heaven would not hear me. And if Heaven would not hear me- to wash me, to make me clean- then utter disaster was my portion.
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James Baldwin |
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52c6cf2
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Have you been to the police?' Richard asked. 'Yes.' She made a gesture of disgust and rose and walked to the window. 'They said it happens all the time - coloured men running off from their families. They said they'd try to find him. But they don't care. They don't care what happens - to a black man!' 'Oh, well, now,' cried Richard, his face red, 'is that fair? I mean, hell, I'm sure they'll look for him just like they look for any other ci..
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James Baldwin |
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574cf4d
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your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it.
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James Baldwin |
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d15b99f
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Don't you see how unjust it was to wait for me to find it out? To put all the burden on me? I had the right to expect to hear from you--women are always waiting for the man to speak.
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James Baldwin |
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a64feb5
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I was often allowed to watch them drink their cocktails.
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James Baldwin |
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7d2d141
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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the con..
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James Baldwin |
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05def1a
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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 of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. The
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James Baldwin |
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8cec7d4
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That was how I met Giovanni. I think we connected the instant that we met. And remain connected still, in spite of our later separation de corps, despite the fact that Giovanni will be rotting soon in unhallowed ground near Paris. Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and..
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James Baldwin |
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ba58388
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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the con..
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James Baldwin |
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76aad5c
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The South very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly that now they cannot even speak to one another. It does not demand much reflection to be appalled at the inevitable state of mind achieved by people who dare not speak freely about those things which most disturb them.
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James Baldwin |
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50aa6a0
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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James Baldwin |
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1318200
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That door is the gateway he has sought so long out of this dirty world, this dirty body. It's getting late. The body in the mirror forces me to turn and face it. And I look at my body, which is under sentence of death. It is lean, hard, and cold, the incarnation of a mystery. And I do not know what moves in this body, what this body is searching. It is trapped in my mirror as it is trapped in time and it hurries toward revelation. When I wa..
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James Baldwin |
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e816d7e
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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 shaken to their foundations.
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James Baldwin |
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cb9a166
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Yes, Mama. I'm going to try to love the Lord." At this there sprang into his mother's face something startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad--as though she were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and seeing on that road a traveler in perpetual danger. Was it he, the traveler? or herself? or was she thinking of the cross of Jesus?"
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James Baldwin |
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b5844f8
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Lord, that Hollywood train, forever coming round the bend!
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trains
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James Baldwin |
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c7ae126
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The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War marks, for me, a turning point in the Negro's relation to America. To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded. One began to pity them, or to hate them. You must put yourself in the skin of a man who is wearing the uniform of his country, is a candidate for death in its defense, and who is called a "nigger" by his co..
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James Baldwin |
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fb19c8a
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For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted. There must be a soul within the body you are holding, a soul which you are striving to meet, a soul which is striving to meet yours.
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sex
passion
soul
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James Baldwin |
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c1fc342
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The root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply wants them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way.
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James Baldwin |
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bbb7014
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Now, for the first time, I began to be aware of my heart, the heart itself: and with this awareness, conscious terror came. I realized that I knew nothing whatever about the way we are put together; and I realized that what I did not know might be in the process of killing me.
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James Baldwin |
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48f6197
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I remembered my mother's insistence that I always wear clean underwear because I might get knocked down by a car on the way to or from school and I and the family would be disgraced even beyond the grave, presumably, if my underwear was dirty. And I began to worry, in fact, as the doctor sniffed and prodded, about the state of the shorts I was wearing. This made me want to laugh. But I could not breathe.
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underwear
emergency
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James Baldwin |
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6d2967f
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This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of living is not real. ... this laughter is universal and never can be stilled.
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James Baldwin |
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e915338
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I was also able to see that the principles governing the rites and customs of the churches in which I grew up did not differ from the principles governing the rites and customs of other churches, white. The principles were Blindness, Loneliness, and Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively cultivated in order to deny the two others. I would love to believe that the principles were Faith, Hope, and Charity, but this is clearly no..
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James Baldwin |
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f918178
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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 who forget. Heroes are rare.
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James Baldwin |
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0894937
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But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.
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James Baldwin |
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1f8b3fa
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The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it. In
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James Baldwin |
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7a9c9e6
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For the horrors of the American Negro's life there has been almost no language.
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James Baldwin |