James Baldwin on the Creative Process and the Artist’s Responsibility to Society
Writer James Baldwin on hate as a defense mechanism: "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."
James Baldwin wrote, “It goes without saying, I believe, that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less.
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society. —BALDWIN
Kenya Hunt • Girl Gurl Grrrl: On Womanhood and Belonging in the Age of Black Girl Magic
The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.
Maria Popova • James Baldwin on the Creative Process and the Artist’s Responsibility to Society
“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of