“Don’t think I don’t know you love me. You believe we going to make it?” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“You think...that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are. Why… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“And if one despairs—as who has not?—of human love, God’s love alone is left. But God—and I felt this even then, so… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone—and you tell nothing but lies.… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In the Negro world, as in the white world, Negroes who have money band together and try to ignore the existence of… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“There seems to be a vast amount of confusion in the Western world concerning these matters, but love and sexual activity are… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“What are you doing all the time? And why do you say nothing? You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true - anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In my experience - and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don't really know what the word… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--concerning the treacherous role that memory plays in a human life, consider how relentlessly… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived,… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity,… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is… — James Baldwin Copy Share
