James A. Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#calling #intimate #intimate knowledge #knowledge #pays

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#begun #habit #live #living #quotation

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#born #changed #changes #eager #go

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#containing #face #invested #like #lover

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#armed #changing #conquest #dominance #exist

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#any #born #conspiracy #cultivation #feels

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#control #describing #every #function #language

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#culture #having #heavy #into #paid

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#forever #holds #need #only #people

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#become #begin #experience #illuminate #key