James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Quotes

• It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.

• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

• Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is growing up.

• People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

• Anyone who had ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

• Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

• The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.

• You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

• Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck -- but, most of all, endurance.

• The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

• Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.