James A. Baldwin Quotes
I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.
An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.
To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.
It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.
You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.' 'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.
I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.
People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.
The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.
Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
But, when the chips are down, its better to be furious with someone you love, or frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.
At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?
I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.
I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.
It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.
A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"
Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
