Great quotes on writing from James Baldwin.
“Write a Sentence as Clean as a Bone” and Other Advice From James Baldwin
Travel.
The story of what can happen to an American Negro writer in Europe simply illustrates, in some relief, what can happen to any American writer there. It is not meant, of course, to imply that it happens to them all, for Europe can be very crippling, too; and, anyway, a writer, when he has made his first breakthrough, has simply won a crucial skirmish in a dangerous, unending and unpredictable battle. Still, the breakthrough is important, and the point is that an American writer, in order to achieve it, very often has to leave this country.
-from “The Discovery of What It Means To Be an American”
Don’t be too ironic.
You are speaking to an old rat. I find much of so‐called avant‐garde writing utterly trivial. If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old‐fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world. What I hope to convey? Well, joy, love, the passion to feel how our choices affect the world … that’s all.
-from a 1979 interview published in The New York Times
Remember why you write.
The bottom line is this: 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. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it.
-from a 1979 interview published in The New York Times
Yes, I know. I shouldn’t be reading this. Dilly-dallying. Lollygagging. I should be writing!