James Baldwin

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Love takes off masks we fear we cannot live without.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

The price we pay when pursuing any art or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way ... people look at reality, then you can change it.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. - from Nobody Knows My Name

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; Freedom is something that people take and people are as free as they want to be. 38.Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

The future is like heaven - everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.

Celem sztuki jest odsłonięcie pytań, które zostały zasłonięte przez odpowiedzi. (Parafraza: Artysta . . . musi dążyć do serca każdej odpowiedzi i ujawnić pytanie, którą ta odpowiedź skrywa.)

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been occluded by the answers. (reformulated: The artist . . . must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question theanswer hides.)