For I amor I wasone of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at alla real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be namedbut elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joeys bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very wellby not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.
About This Quote
About James Baldwin
James Baldwin was a 20th-century American writer and activist. James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Life — Reflections on the meaning, challenges, and beauty of life