James Baldwin

"The church was very important in the Negro community during slavery and reconstruction."

"One must say No to the rules of the normal world in order to live imaginatively."

"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love, and you have to see if it will work."

"I think we are terrified by the idea of facing ourselves."

"The artist can absorb the pain of the world into his own being and transform it."

"Most of us are not as free as we think we are."

"Once you have thought about how terrible your life sounds you are more or less forced to do something about it."

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."

"I cannot be a pessimist because I am alive. To be alive is to assume the possibility of change."

"To dismiss someone because of their sexuality is not acceptable."

"The only people who are really happy are the ones who do exactly what they want to do."

"I am what time and circumstance made me, but I am also, in a larger sense, the product of my choices."

"The black man has never been free in America, and he is not free now."

"Racism is not a problem that can be solved by God or by good intentions alone."

"The writer is necessarily the voice of the voiceless."

"We are not responsible for all the things that happen to us, but we are responsible for the way we respond."

"I am not interested in viewing another person as a sex object, but rather as a whole human being."

"The goal of the oppressed is not to be oppressed, but to be free."

"One moment can change a lifetime; a lifetime is composed of moments."

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art and his conscience."

"Every legend contains a grain of truth, but the legend is not the truth."

"We must accept that within the person is the capacity for radical change and transformation."

"Not all of us can become great artists, but all of us can become great human beings."

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

"If one is not careful, one's life can become subsumed by the lives of other people."

"The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

"To accept oneself completely is a hard thing to do; the world has other plans for us."

"We cannot be free until we have the courage to acknowledge who we are."

"The purpose of my writing is the liberation of myself and of my reader."

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets."