James Baldwin Quote

When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech — and something of Dickens' love for bravura — have something to do with me today; but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Likewise, innumerable people have helped me in many ways; but finally, I suppose, the most difficult (and most rewarding) thing in my life has been the fact that I was born a Negro and was forced, therefore, to effect some kind of truce with this reality. (Truce, by the way, is the best one can hope for.)


Autobiographical Notes (1952)


When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King...

When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King...

When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King...

When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King...