You know, its not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. – James Baldwin
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. – James Baldwin
If youre treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real theyre real for you whether theyre real or not. – James Baldwin
No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. – James Baldwin
Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans. – William Blake