James Baldwin: Find out what you don’t want to know

"You have to strip yourself of all your disguises."

Author James Baldwin:

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

And here’s Baldwin’s argument for simplicity:

The hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. You have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn’t know you had. You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

Related: James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing

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