Cecil Baldwin Quotes

Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious glowing cloud devouring your entire community. While they're happening, they feel like the only thing that matters and you can hardly imagine that there's a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the glow cloud moves on. And you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find, as time passes, that you remember it less and less. Or absolutely not at all, in my case. ~ Cecil Baldwin

There's a lot of downtime during immortality. ~ Cecil Baldwin

There's a monster at the end of this book. It's the blank page where the story ends and you're left alone with yourself and your thoughts. ~ Cecil Baldwin

It's nice to have a station pet. Wish it wasn't trapped in a hovering prison in the men's bathroom, but listen: no pet is perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is. ~ Cecil Baldwin

Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably. ~ Cecil Baldwin

The moon's weird though, right? It's there, and there, and then suddenly it's not. And it seems to be pretty far up. Is it watching us? If not, what is it watching instead? Is there something more interesting than us? Hey, watch us moon! We may not always be the best show in the universe, but we try. ~ Cecil Baldwin

Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget. ~ Cecil Baldwin

And now a brief public service announcement. Alligators: can they kill your children? Yes. ~ Cecil Baldwin

We have nothing to speak about. There never was. Words are an unnecessary trouble. Expression is time wasting away. Any communication is just a yelp in the darkness. I am speaking now but I am saying nothing. I am just making noises, and, as it happens, they are organized in words and you should not draw meaning from this. ~ Cecil Baldwin

Perfection is not real. Perfection is not human. Carlos is not perfect- no, even better- he is imperfect. Everything about him, and us, and all of this is imperfect. And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks into which our outsized love can seep and pool. ~ Cecil Baldwin

But the Atlantic Ocean is deep and wide and money doesn't hurry from the other side. ~ James Baldwin

Maybe it's because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you. Maybe you get scared and numb, because you don't know if you can depend on people for anything, anymore. ~ James Baldwin

In the theater, you act more of the time. In the movies, you get to act maybe 20 or 30 minutes of the day. I love acting in movies. It's just different. ~ Alec Baldwin

Cecil reached for Dave, but Dave stepped back. "Dave, why are you doing this? You're not getting paid. Lovejoy called you off the case. You want the truth? You're compulsive. You can't leave it alone. You're like Adam Streeter, you know that? You live for danger."
"I live for justice," Dave said.
"Justice is a dream," Cecil scoffed, "a romantic ideal. Who the fuck gets justice in this life?( ... ) ~ Joseph Hansen

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty ... the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mark of cruelty. ~ James Baldwin

My next important discovery: Children of Hermes cannot rap. At all.
Bless his conniving little heart, Cecil Markowitz tried his best, but he kept throwing off my rhythm with his spastic clapping and terrible air mic noises. After a few trial runs, I demoted him to dancer. His job would be to shimmy back and forth and wave his hands, which he did with the enthusiasm of a tent-revival preacher.
The others managed to keep up. They still looked like half-plucked, highly combustible chickens, but they bopped with the proper amount of soul. ~ Rick Riordan

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. ~ James A. Baldwin

It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians is you ~ James Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. ~ James Baldwin

I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived. ~ Stanley Baldwin

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off. ~ James A. Baldwin

What I have crossed out I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out I'm dissatisfied with. ~ Cecil B. DeMille

Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"
"Well [ ... ] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."
"And when you have waited - -has it made you sure? ~ James Baldwin

If decorum allowed, she would take tea at the hotel. Once inside, she might run into a rich northern gentleman who had ridden in this very coach. If only she could touch something colored blue for luck before entering the building! "Touch blue and your wish will come true." That, along with the rabbit's foot she always carried in her pocket, would almost ensure such a meeting. ~ Karen Cecil Smith

Cecil Palmer spoke of the horrors of everyday life. Nearly every broadcast told a story of impending doom or death, or worse: a long life lived in fruitless fear of doom or death. It wasn't that Jackie wanted to know all of the bad news of the world. It was that she loved sitting in the dark of her bedroom, swaddled in blankets and invisible radio waves. ~ Joseph Fink

I always equate wrestling to having been in the Marine Corps. ~ William Baldwin

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen. ~ Cecil Day-Lewis

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. ~ James Baldwin

You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something - I am God. ~ Alec Baldwin

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude. ~ Franny Billingsley

he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation. For the meaning of revelation is that what is revealed is true, and must be borne. ~ James Baldwin

Industry cannot flow unless cpaital is confident, and capital will not be confident as long as it fears that Parliament will meddle with it and walk off with its profits. ~ Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess Of Salisbury

Wonder is not a Pollyanna stance, not a denial of reality; wonder is an acknowledgement of the power of the mind to transform, to notice, to decide what experience shall mean. ~ Christina Baldwin

Wherever you turn your eye - except in science - an Oxford man is at the top of the tree. ~ Cecil Rhodes

I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself ... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. ~ Roger Nash Baldwin

We've had some really good guest stars. But I have to go with Alec Baldwin as my favorite. He is so neat and such a movie star. He's handsome and quirky. I was in heaven the week he was on the set. ~ Nikki Cox

No man can say whether you are happy or not until you die, for no man knows misfortunes may overtake you or what misery may be yours in place of all this slendor. ~ James Baldwin

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. ~ James Baldwin

You took the best, so why not take the rest? ~ James Baldwin

Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, 'it means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had. ~ James Baldwin

Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai ... but he has never improved on God's law. ~ Cecil B. DeMille

There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed ... But the conquest of the physical world is not man's only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place. ~ James A. Baldwin

We learn from joy but also from grief; we learn from achievement, but just as much from failure; and what we learn from grief and failure is, after a while, to be grateful... All of us, young and old, learn more from obstacles than from the smooth path and from bracing ourselves against sudden harsh winds than from the undisturbed weather. ~ Faith Baldwin

There's no sort o' mistake in little Bullet. He can pick up miles on his feet, and fling 'em behind him as fast as the next man's hoss, I don't care where he comes from. And he can keep at it as long as the sun can shine without resting. ~ Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

I tell people, if you really want me to look that good, why don't you cough up about $2 million more and hire Alec or Billy? If you want me to do it, this is what you get. ~ Daniel Baldwin

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy. ~ James Baldwin

Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people. ~ James A. Baldwin

You never really know the guy until you sit down with him. ~ Adam Baldwin

It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen. ~ James Baldwin

The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of England that has any relation to truth. ~ Robert Baldwin Ross

A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other. ~ James Baldwin

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process ~ James Baldwin

I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason ... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are. ~ James Baldwin

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. ~ James A. Baldwin