‘Artists are here to disturb the peace’: Remembering James Baldwin’s extraordinary wit and wisdom, in 12 inspiring quotes
The celebrated author of classics like If Beale Street Could Talk and Giovanni's Room died in 1987 at the age of 63
1 “Artists are here to disturb the peace. They have to disturb the peace. Otherwise, chaos”
As stated in An Interview With James Baldwin in 1961
2 “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read”
To LIFE magazine in 1963.
3 “People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say ‘Yes’ to life.”
As written in Giovanni’s Room, perhaps Baldwin’s most famous work, published in 1956.
4 “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
As stated in a 1961 radio interview.
5 “You 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.”
Baldwin on the subject of accepting one’s gayness while speaking to the The Village Voice in 1984.
6 “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
As written in the 1963 non-fiction book The Fire Next Time.
7 “Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it”
As stated in An Interview With James Baldwin in 1961.
8 “This is why one must say ‘Yes’ to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.”
As written in Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon from 1964. The quote continues: “For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.”
9 “Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.”
As stated in Conversations With James Baldwin, a collection of interviews with Baldwin covering 1961-1987.
10 “Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
As written in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son is a collection of essays published in 1961.
11 “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind”
As written in If Beale Street Could Talk, published in 1974.
12 “People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception”
From Giovanni’s Room. The quote continues: “Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”