73 quotes
People pay for what they do, and, still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead.
No Name in the Street (1972)
He was silent for a long while. Then: 'You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car.'
Giovanni's Room (1956)
But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
Giovanni's Room (1956)
I think that mankind can do better than that, and I wish to be a witness to this small and stubborn possibility.
The War Crimes Tribunal (1967)
You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
James Baldwin: Reflections of a Maverick" interview (1984)
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
No Name in the Street (1972)
If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
The Fire Next Time (1963)
'Somebody,' said Jacques, 'your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour — and in the oddest places! — for the lack of it.'
Giovanni's Room (1956)
Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.
Giovanni's Room (1956)
The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.
Notes on the House of Bondage (1980)
I shall never be able to have any more of these boyish, zestful affairs — which are, really, when one thinks about it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly.
Giovanni's Room (1956)
'And, at the risk of losing forever your so remarkably candid friendship, let me tell you something. Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford, and you are not that young any more.'
Giovanni's Room (1956)
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
The Fire Next Time (1963)
Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
Notes of a Native Son (1955)
I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I do not expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.
An interview with James Baldwin (1961)
If you don't know what happened behind you, you've no idea of what is happening around you.
An interview with James Baldwin (1961)
What white Americans think is happening in the world and what black people must deal with day by day are very different. (1970)
Conversations with James Baldwin (1961)
a child’s major attention has to be concentrated on how to fit into a world which, with every passing hour, reveals itself as merciless.
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968)
This may be why we appear to learn absolutely nothing from experience, or may, in other words, account for our incoherence: memory does not require that we reconstitute the event, but that we justify it.
Just Above My Head (1979)