Writing By James Baldwin Quotes & Sayings

SA's challenge is to get the democratic whole working in the way that the formerly white parts are used to. SA's threat is that the democratic whole ends up working in the way that the formerly black parts have become increasingly used to. — Denis Beckett

One writes out of one thing only-one's own experience, — James A. Baldwin

(As your experience about writing accrues) you learn how little you know. It becomes much more difficult because the hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. It becomes more difficult because you have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn't know you had. — James Baldwin

Jews are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it. (...) The priest spells poverty (...) It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think. (...) I want to see everyone, all creeds and classes having a comfortable tidysized income. I call that patriotism." (526) — James Joyce

He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him. They were all named, more or less, all more or less destined, the pattern he wished them to describe was clear to him. But it did not seem clear to them. He could move them about but they themselves did not move. He put words in their mouths which they uttered sullenly, unconvinced. With the same agony, or greater, with which he attempted to seduce a woman, he was trying to seduce his people: he begged them to surrender up their privacy. And they refused - without, for all their ugly intransigence, showing the faintest desire to leave him. They were waiting for him to find the key, press the nerve, tell the truth. — James Baldwin

I rely on some words that actually my husband said to me. He jokes about saying, "You know it's only darkest before it's totally black!" Even in my darkest hour - and my darkest hour was probably when I lost both my parents - I look to him and I see what he has endured, what he has overcome, what he is doing with his life, and just how he's lived his life. — Cindy McCain

He wanted to go home and lock his door and sleep. He was tired of the troubles of real people. He wanted to get back to the people he was inventing, whose troubles he could bear. — James Baldwin

I don't know any writers who don't drink. — James Baldwin

I do a lot of rewriting. It's very painful. — James Baldwin

Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk. — Thomas Sowell

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world. — James Baldwin

But it'll kill him!"
"It could be worse," said Rincewind.
"What?"
"It could be us," Rincewind pointed out logically. — Terry Pratchett

He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time. — James Baldwin

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform — James A. Baldwin

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently. — James A. Baldwin

Geometry exist everywhere.It is necessary, however, to have eyes to see it, intelligence to understand it , and spirit to wonder at it.The wild Bedouin sees geometric forms but doesn't understand them ; the Sunni understands them but does not admire them; the artist, finally, perceives the perfection of figures, understands beauty, and admires order and harmony.God was the Great Geometer.He geometrized heaven and earth. — Malba Tahan

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. — James A. Baldwin

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many. — Michel De Montaigne

My novel's about Brooklyn." "The tree? Or the kids or the murderers or the junkies?" Vivaldo swallowed. "All of them." "That's quite an assignment. And if you don't mind my saying so, it sounds just a little bit old fashioned." He put his hand before his mouth and burped. "Brooklyn's been done. And done. — James Baldwin

Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer, until the story becomes at once more narrow and larger, more and more precise, more and more reverberating. — James Baldwin

Temptation - for the entire human race, for the people of Israel, and for each of us personally - starts with a question of identity, moves to a confusion of the desires, and ultimately heads to a contest of futures. In short, there's a reason you want what you don't want to want. Temptation is embryonic, personality specific, and purpose directed. — Russell D. Moore

When you're writing, you're trying to find out something which you don't know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don't want to know, what you don't want to find out. But something forces you to anyway. — James A. Baldwin

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real. — James A. Baldwin

I will wait for you as long as it takes. I will love you every moment across time. — Lauren Kate

Writing is a political instrument. — James A. Baldwin

My dream role is to portray someone like James Baldwin. I've always been a fan of his writing, and I feel like he's one of our unsung heroes. He's been pretty much forgotten, and I think he needs to be recognized. He had to go all the way to Europe to find recognition and acceptance, and I'd just like to bring him to the forefront. — Michael K. Williams

What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be
not seem
outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined
as a means of being spontaneous. That one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures placed on one to lie about one's own experience. For in the same way that the writer scarcely ever had a more uneasy time, he has never been needed more. — James Baldwin