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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

— James Baldwin Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

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More quotes by James Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Giovanni's Room (1956)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Baldwin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.