I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
James BaldwinGiovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon.
James BaldwinStichwörter: love affection homosexuality lovers bisexuality giovanni-s-room playfulness
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 but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
James BaldwinSocieties never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.
James BaldwinYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
James BaldwinIt seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
James BaldwinStichwörter: life philosophy death
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
James BaldwinStichwörter: love god religion
The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left.
James BaldwinStichwörter: love god religion
Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.
James BaldwinStichwörter: alienation
Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
James BaldwinStichwörter: philosophical inspirational-life
« erste vorherige
Seite 18 von 29.
nächste letzte »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.