People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. – James Baldwin
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. – James Baldwin
James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare– but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them. – James Baldwin
The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men. – James Baldwin