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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

Source: “Letter from a Region in My Mind”, The New Yorker, 17 November 1962

Context In this long essay on the Nation of Islam, his meeting with Elijah Muhammad and his own adolescence as a preacher in Harlem, he weighed religion, race and love.

Portrait of James Baldwin
James BaldwinUnited States · 1924–1987
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