The following quotes are both from James Baldwin. Read his work. Read it.
"The bottom line is this: you write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it."
New York Times interview, 1979
"Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you are not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real."
Paris Review interview, 1984
These quotes came from an essay in Literary Hub by Emily Temple
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