James Baldwin

"All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie."

"A writer is simply someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

"I was not born in order to be educated so that I could have a career."

"Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of almost nothing else if you had it not."

"If we are not capable of anger, we are not capable of love."

"Provincialism is an enslaving condition and one must do everything to escape it."

"The trick is to work as hard as you possibly can—to achieve something."

"The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within ourselves."

"I want to be an honest man and a good writer."

"It is only in this endless space of self-examination that conscience and consciousness are born."

"Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford."

"The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim."

"I think I've always been driven—I'm a relentless person, I think."

"One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young."

"The poet—or anyone who has ever read one—knows that love cannot be calculated."

"The inability to see beauty marks a degree of spiritual sickness."

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

"I think that one must finally take one's life in one's own hands."

"The only reason you are here is because you do not know what else to do."

"Tell me how long he's been dead. Oh. When was the last time you ever heard him sing?"

"People pay for what they do, and, still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become."

"It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is wear it."

"The noblest thing to which a human being can aspire is the recovery of innocence."

"Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love."

"I've seen that kind of face before. The trouble is, you don't live long."

"The universe, as far as we can tell, is infinite in its complexity and in its variety."

"Hatred is just a crutch. Why not try walking without it for a change?"

"Your past is your teacher, not your captor."