JAMES BALDWIN QUOTES V

American novelist (1960- )

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

Tags: misery


And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was discovering this in the way, I suppose, that everybody does, but having tried, endlessly, to do something about it.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head


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


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


We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: children


I come out of streets where life itself--life itself!--depends on timing more infinitesimal than the split second, where apprehension must be swifter than the speed of light.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: life


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

Tags: life


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

Tags: home


You haven’t got to be in love every time you go to bed.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: love


I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room

Tags: thought


Nothing tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither kindness, nor scorn, nor hatred, nor love. She had never thought of prayer. It was unimaginable that she would ever bend her knees and come crawling along a dusty floor to anybody’s altar.

JAMES BALDWIN

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Tags: kindness


But don’t lose heart, dear ones -- don’t lose heart. Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


You carry this pain around inside all day and all night long. No way to beat it--no way. But when I started getting high, I was cool, and it didn't bother me. And I wasn't lonely then, it was all right. And the chicks--I could handle them, they couldn't reach me. And I didn't know I was hooked--until I was hooked.

JAMES BALDWIN

Blues for Mister Charlie

Tags: night


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"

Tags: love


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

Tags: change


They do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing a game and that we do it to shock them.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: Men


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


I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: America


It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: hate