Intercourse

Nothing is one’s own, nothing, certainly not oneself, because the imagination is atrophied, like some limb, dead and hanging useless, and the dull repetition of programmed sexual fantasy has replaced it.

“It is really quite impossible, ” writes James Baldwin, “to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of imagination, made one’s own.

And so, we are inarticulate about sex, even though we talk about it all the time

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more—also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge, and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth.

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more—also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge, and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth.

True rebels, after all, are as rare as true lovers

True rebels, after all, are as rare as true lovers, and, in both cases, to mistake a fever

for a passion can destroy one’ s life.

J a m e s B a l d w i n

No N a m e in the Street