The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
Words have users, but as well, users have words. And it is the users that establish the world's realities. — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
I had just been in some repressive situations - the black middle-class college scene and the crazy United States Air Force - and so… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
what is lost because it is most precious what is most precious because it is lost — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
You have to get an individual who's willing to actually struggle with the system to change it. As long as you have people who… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
I had a little portable typewriter. I call it my Harlem Literary Fellowship. — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
I'm fully conscious all the time that I'm an American Negro, because it's part of my life. But I also know that if I… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
The films of Warhol, when they are about anything are about sucking people off. This can be high art, to people who are interested… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness. — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
“Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth or trees or lemons piled on a step. Or black ladies dying of men leaving nickel hearts… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
Jimmy Baldwin was not only a writer, an international literary figure: he was a man, spirit, voice - old and black and terrible as… — Amiri Baraka Copy Share Image
