James Baldwin Quotes
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
Quotes to Explore
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After the success of my first album and the success of 'Flow Joe' kind of faded, I was struggling to make some money and make ends meet.
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I'm happy to fight anybody.
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When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.
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It may be a cold, clammy thing to say, but those that treat friendship the same as any other selfishness seem to get the most out of it.
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If people really knew what they were getting into with their third chemotherapy treatment, or getting a pacemaker when they're 92, if they really knew what that was going to mean, they might say no, and we should give them that information.
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The last thing I would ever do is try to become a network programmer.
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If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that I don't think a man ever looks better than when he's in a suit. So I'm wearing them increasingly, not in my personal life, but in my professional life, and I'm really enjoying it.
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Schizophrenia beats dining alone.
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Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way - everything is interdependent, not absolute.
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In very simple language, Morrie always seems to be able to explain something that other people would take a chapter for, you know.
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I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do.
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I've never been jealous. I've never had to be.
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Those darker sides, the things that we don't want to admit about ourselves - that's what excites me.
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Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.
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I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well.
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They're making a song and dance because that serves their immediate interests. But what will happen tomorrow? They will have to pay salaries and pensions.
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I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.
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No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
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In my view, relationship movies never get old because humanity will never not be confounded by their relationships.
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I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
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No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
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If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
