“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“One must say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found—and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought,… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I… — 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
“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
“This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“A real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things that can be named.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
Not everything that we face can be changed but nothing can be changed until it's faced. — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If the hope of giving is to love the living, the giver risks madness in the act of giving.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“They began to care less about the way they looked, the way they dressed, the things they did; presently, one found them… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition.… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road—and the road has… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Art has to be a kind of confession. I don’t mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I am not trying to be méchant when I talk about women. I respect women—very much—for their inside life, which is not… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
