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James A. Baldwin Quotes about Reality

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

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

James A. Baldwin
Eye, Reality, People
"Stranger in the Village". Essay by James A. Baldwin, first published in Harper's Magazine (1953), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), and later quoted in "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'" by Teju Cole, www.newyorker.com. August 19, 2014.

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

James A. Baldwin
Reality, Color, Political
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.

James A. Baldwin
Helping Others, Reality, People
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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.

James A. Baldwin
Change, Writing, Reality
"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

James A. Baldwin
Eye, Reality, Long
"Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'" by Teju Cole, www.newyorker.com. August 19, 2014.

If the word 'integration' means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

James A. Baldwin
Brother, Mean, Reality
"The Fire Next Time". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1963.

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

James A. Baldwin
Reality, Risk, Portraits

You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

James A. Baldwin
Change, Writing, Reality

The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

James A. Baldwin
Reality, Artistic, Force

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. Baldwin
Journey, Reality, Darkness

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

James A. Baldwin
Truth, Reality, Shapes

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