American novelist (1960- )
Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld all blacks together into a mighty fist.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
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
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
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
Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
I watch the men in the hospital, in the streets--some of these men are pretty awful people, they really are slimy sewer scum, do anything to pay down on the car, to meet the damn car payments--they don't care about women, or men, or nobody. It just seems so hopeless.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Whenever we encounter him in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
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
He had often watched her as she crossed the floor in her checkered apron, her face a dark mask behind which belligerence battled with humility. This was in her eyes which never for an instant lost their wariness and which were always ready, within a split second, to turn black and lightless with contempt.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
And then they walked through the town, in which not even a cat seemed to be moving; and everywhere they walked, the cathedral was watching them.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk