The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side. – James Baldwin
Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. – James Baldwin
Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden. – James Baldwin
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid the state of being alone. – James Baldwin
The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. – E. M. Forster