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
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
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
It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
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"
The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
It is the question of Bigger's humanity which is at stake, the relationship in which he stands to all other Americans--and, by implication, to all people--and it is precisely this question which it cannot clarify, with which it cannot, in fact, come to any coherent terms. He is the monster created by the American republic, the present awful sum of generations of oppression; but to say that he is a monster is to fall into the trap of making him subhuman and he must, therefore, be made representative of a way of life which is real and human in precise ratio to the degree to which it seems to us monstrous and strange.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
One of the most American of attributes: the inability to believe that time is real. It is this inability which makes them so romantic about the nature of society, and it is this inability which has led them into a total confusion about the nature of experience.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
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
Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
I remember what it was ... to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting--everything--was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
You haven’t got to be in love every time you go to bed.
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
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
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
Folks can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain