James Baldwin Quotes

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

James Baldwin

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Quotes to Explore

• I think what I do in my acting world and what I do in my standup world is bring up a brand that I want to bring across. Once you figure out your brand and what you do, it's kind of easy at that. You end up getting your audience.

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Up
  • World
  • End

• I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large.

  

  Garry Shandling
  • Business
  • Fear
  • Failure

• Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.

  

  Gail Sheehy
  • Feeling
  • Light
  • Door

• I hope people don't think I'm crazy, because I'm not.

  

  Macaulay Culkin
  • People
  • Hope
  • Crazy

• But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

  

  H. P. Lovecraft
  • Men
  • Nature
  • Ocean

• Israel never targets civilians deliberately, period.

  

  Naftali Bennett
  • Never
  • Period
  • Israel

• Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn't planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I'm not recommending it as a way to write. It's very sloppy, but it works for me.

  

  Barbara Mertz
  • Me
  • Doing
  • Page

• Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef,' I feel, is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant, we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

  

  Padma Lakshmi
  • Work
  • Different
  • Why

• It's a very generous culture, American culture. I know you can't generalize 300 million people, but everyone I've met here has been so lovely to me.

  

  Jacki Weaver
  • People
  • American
  • Culture

• I just do my work, try to do everything I can. I don't weigh in all offseason. I just try to get better, be in better position, be an athlete.

  

  Pablo Sandoval
  • Work
  • Better
  • Athlete

• Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.

  

  Lars von Trier
  • Play
  • Tennis
  • Plan

• I don't judge people on their personal lives.

  

  Bebe Rexha
  • People
  • Judge
  • Personal

• Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Life
  • Music
  • Journey

• There are purple grapes in the Land of Git-Thare.

  

  Sam Walter Foss
  • Purple

• 11. The macrocosm is in its entirety in the body. The body is in its entirety in the heart. Therefore heart is the summarised form of all the macrocosm.

  

  Ramana Maharshi
  • Heart

• After seven years of marriage,He wanted out.Now after seven months of freedom,It's clear that there's no doubt.She's gonna make it,And he never will.He's at the foot of the mountain,And she's over that hill.He's sinkin' at sea,And her sails are filled.She's gonna make it,And he never will.

  

  Garth Brooks
  • She
  • Freedom
  • Marriage

• For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.

  

  Alfred North Whitehead
  • Today
  • Heaven

• DK: How often does the seriousness end and the irony begin in your work? M: Many times. I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet, for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?

  

  Morrissey The Smiths
  • Work
  • Heaven
  • Mirror

• I released 34 years of tax returns and 300,000 e-mails in my government record. To get the information from Hillary Clinton, you need to get a subpoena from the FBI.

  

  Jeb Bush

• Personally, I regard myself as an intellectual 'rebel,' kicking against the 'old colonialism-imperialism paradigm' which has landed Africa in a conundrum.

  

  George Ayittey
  • Rebel

• I always like to talk about how important space is. Art is in the spaces. Anybody can sing a note; it takes an artist to sing the spaces. Anybody can paint a brushstroke; it takes an artist to know when not to put the brushstroke.

  

  Brian Stokes Mitchell
  • Important
  • Art
  • Space

• The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders to-day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism.

  

  Charles Sanders Peirce
  • Different
  • Mind

• Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

  

  James Baldwin