In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.
James A. BaldwinYou have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.
James A. BaldwinMost people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.
James A. BaldwinAny real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
James A. BaldwinNakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
James A. Baldwin