James Baldwin
James Baldwin has inspired me for a long time, so I thought appropriat to give him a page on my blog. He was an African-American author, born in New York City in 1924. He grew up in Harlem. His prose and poetry explores interconnected themes of identity, masculinity, sexuality and race.
James Baldwin was educated in several schools in New York and spent some time living in Greenwich Village. He began to develop his writing career, publishing articles and short stories.
He became disillusioned with life as a Black man in the United States, (who can blame him) faced with prejudice and discrimination. At the age of 24, he emigrated from the United States to Paris in 1948.
Famous Quotes by James Baldwin
“One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”
“Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”
“When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.”
“You cannot describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.”
“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive.”