There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
JAMES A. BALDWINThere is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
JAMES A. BALDWINIf the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
JAMES A. BALDWINAt bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.
JAMES A. BALDWINThere is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
JAMES A. BALDWINYou think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
JAMES A. BALDWINA child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES A. BALDWINHatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWINI must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES A. BALDWINOne writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
JAMES A. BALDWINThe determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
JAMES A. BALDWINA devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
JAMES A. BALDWINThere is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
JAMES A. BALDWINUnless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
JAMES A. BALDWINLife is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWINAt four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
JAMES A. BALDWINYou have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN