The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWINThe power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWINOur crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
JAMES BALDWINI want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWINThe world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES BALDWINI often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
JAMES BALDWINTo be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
JAMES BALDWINThere are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
JAMES BALDWINPeople pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
JAMES BALDWINYouth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
JAMES BALDWINAnyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES BALDWINIt’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
JAMES BALDWINIf a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINLife is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
JAMES BALDWINIf I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWINPerhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN