American novelist (1960- )
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
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
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
Why am I going home? he asked himself. But he knew why. It was time. In order not to lose all that he had gained, he had to move forward and risk it all.
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
Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Devil Finds Work
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
At the rate things are going here, all of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.
JAMES BALDWIN
"A Negro Assays on the Negro Mood", New York Times, March 12, 1961
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
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we’re what we are.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
He stopped. He had not liked the book. He could not take it seriously. It was an able, intelligent, mildly perceptive tour de force and it would never mean anything to anyone.
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
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
Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
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
The taste for obscenity is universal and the appetite for reality rare and hard to cultivate.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country