THE DOOM AND GLORY OF KNOWING WHO YOU ARE

Spending Sunday morning in bed with Maria Popova’s superlative website Brain Pickings—an epic act of generosity and simply the best thing online—and came across this beautifully inclusive and compassionate quote from the great James Baldwin. Thank you, Maria. Thank you, James. Love, Susie x

‘You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.’

— James Baldwin, The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are, Life Magazine, May 24, 1963.