Writing James Baldwin Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

There will be no recognition of Israel and there will be no security for the occupation and colonization forces. Resistance will remain our strategic option. — Khaled Mashal

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

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

I have already seen death, and I know that death is supporting me in my cause of education. Death does not want to kill me. — Malala Yousafzai

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

The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him. — James M. Barrie

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

I think there is a very subtle shift from the metal I grew up on to Weezer. I think the big shift was from a minor key to a major key. That made a huge difference in how it was perceived. — Rivers Cuomo

I'm tired of the 'can't win against evil' way. I'm sorry, you cannot. They'll run you over. So that is my one big passion. 'Ten Stupid Things People Do to Let Evil Win' - that will be my next passion book. I am angry. — Laura Schlessinger

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

Things like pornography perpetuates this idea that women are just there as objects of male desire and are not complex people with their own sexuality and humanity. — Marielle Heller

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

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

Her eyes narrowed, but she wasn't yelling.
I think she liked me ... kind of. The way a mother would like an annoying spastic two year old who belonged to someone else. — Robyn Peterman