American novelist (1960- )
She seemed to listen to life as though life were the most cunning and charming of confidence men: knowing perfectly well that she was being conned, she, nevertheless, again and again, gave the man the money for the Brooklyn Bridge. She never gained possession of the bridge, of course, but she certainly learned how to laugh. And the tiny lines in her face had been produced as much by laughter as by loss.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.
JAMES BALDWIN
address delivered at Kalamazoo College, February 1960
His dangerous, overwhelming lust for life had failed to involve him in anything deeper than perhaps half a dozen extremely casual acquaintanceships in about as many bars.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
You carry this pain around inside all day and all night long. No way to beat it--no way. But when I started getting high, I was cool, and it didn't bother me. And I wasn't lonely then, it was all right. And the chicks--I could handle them, they couldn't reach me. And I didn't know I was hooked--until I was hooked.
JAMES BALDWIN
Blues for Mister Charlie
Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Nation, July 7, 1956
Whenever he was uncomfortable -- which was often -- his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
They do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing a game and that we do it to shock them.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld all blacks together into a mighty fist.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
JAMES BALDWIN
interview with Julius Lester, New York Times, May 27, 1984
You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we’re what we are.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
JAMES BALDWIN
"In Search of a Majority"
Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk