James Baldwin

"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."

"The perpetual condition of the successful man is a kind of urgent improvisation."

"If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving."

"All art is a kind of confession."

"It is not in the world that we will find our answers."

"A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society."

"Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection."

"The years of our lives are our bank account of time."

"The only people who can get away with something are people whom nobody is watching."

"We can make America what America must become."

"Passion is the seed of greatness."

"To examine the evidence of things not seen, as the writer of Hebrews might say."

"Everybody has paid their dues in some way or another."

"We are not able to see what we don't believe."

"The facts of the life are difficult to face."

"The price one pays for pushing oneself to the limits is not always self-destruction."

"What you do reveals what you believe, regardless of your words."

"The writer is committed to tell the truth."

"Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war."

"The greatest evidence of our maturity would be the acceptance of each other."

"We must look at reality and tell this truth, however difficult the truth is."

"Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction."

"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to necessarily answer them."

"Oppression does not make for long-suffering, long-suffering makes for oppression."

"Dreams are necessary to life."

"People are imprisoned in history and history is imprisoned in them."

"Humanity is more important than money."

"You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not the other way around."

"The impossible is the least that one can demand."

"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated."