James Baldwin // "I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering…but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch…his identity, out of the fire…knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth…and indeed, no church…can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words."