James Baldwin // "I left this country for one reason only, one reason. I didn’t care where I went...I ended up on the streets of Paris with $40 in my pocket on the theory that nothing worse could happen to me there than what had already happened to me here. You talk about making it as a writer by yourself, you had to be able then to turn off all the antenna with which you live because once you turn your back on this society, you may die. You may die. And it’s very hard to sit at a typewriter and concentrate on that if you’re afraid of the world around you. The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me, they released me from that particular social terror which was not the paranoia of my own mind, but a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, every boss, everybody... I don’t know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions... You want me to make an act of faith risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America which I have never seen."