10 Quotes on Writing by James Baldwin

James Baldwin was an American essayist, novelist, poet and playwright. During the 1950s and 1960s, he became an important voice in the Civil Rights Movement. His best known works include Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time and _ Go Tell it on the Mountain_.

James Baldwin on Writing

“You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.”

#238

James Baldwin

“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.”

#334

James Baldwin

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

#535

James Baldwin

“The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”

#536

James Baldwin

“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...”

#537

James Baldwin

“One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience.”

#538

James Baldwin

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

#539

James Baldwin

“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.”

#540

James Baldwin

“If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.”

#541

James Baldwin

“When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.”

#542

James Baldwin

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