James Baldwin Quotes

In terms of my life, I guess I want to share whatever I've learned really, which is basically one thing: know yourself, look for yourself, know what to look for, cherish it, be honest, be authentic, even if it hurts your feelings. That's not bad.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.

If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

True love brings up everything - you're allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.

I'm pretty transparent and have no problem sharing my weaknesses.

I think there's a certain level of trust that I have with women. I've always been honest, even when I haven't had good times in my life or my movie bombed or I've had great success. I've owned up to all of it.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

I really don't feel that any of the pieces I wrote were confessions; there are no revelations about secrets in my life, and actually I have nothing to confess and I certainly do not ask for redemption and there is no reward for confessing that I expect.

I'm certainly honest - and I can be socially awkward.

I primarily have had my career in comedy, and that is something that I have never been too concerned about because I know there is really no room for vanity in comedy. Comedy comes from pain and it is a lot easier to empathize with somebody who is out of shape.

I'm not afraid to be bluntly honest in my songs, even if it means I'm discovering things about myself that I'd rather not.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

I think it requires a bit of honesty, Swan Lake.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

It's hard to talk about yourself.

One of the commitments I made to myself when I decided to write a book was to be brutally honest, particularly about myself.

I have faced up to what I am.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

It is very difficult for us to know we love somebody because it is an insecure position to be in. But in the end, it is important to be honest about your love because life is not that long.

My life is an open pamphlet.

I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

It sounds so cheesy, but there's something very powerful about looking in the mirror and asking yourself a question. Because I think it's really hard to lie.

If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.

I don't see the point of doing an interview unless you're going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I'm extremely human and have done some dark things I don't think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I'd like to think it's the nice thing to do.

I tend to find you have to be fairly vulnerable to get something... to get a perspective worth having. Which can be controversial. But I find telling someone what you're thinking about, what you want, and what you're afraid of can often help them give guidance.