The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

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.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

Man cannot live by profit alone.