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

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About James Baldwin

Portrait of James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an African-American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top...

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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.

—James Baldwin

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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

—James Baldwin

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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.

—James Baldwin

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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

—James Baldwin

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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

—James Baldwin

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More quotations tagged with “art”

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

—W. Somerset Maugham

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I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

—Claude Monet

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If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

—Johnny Carson

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Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

—Kurt Vonnegut

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Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work - I merely inflict myself upon the public.

—Robert Morley

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