the self one invents
It has always been much easier (because it has always
seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror
within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any
of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has
something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the
self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a
provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to
blow the provisional self to bits. James Baldwin
It has always been much easier (because it has always
seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror
within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any
of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has
something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the
self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a
provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to
blow the provisional self to bits. James Baldwin