It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES BALDWINIt is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES BALDWINIf you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody
JAMES BALDWINI can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES BALDWINThe artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
JAMES BALDWINI want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWINThere are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
JAMES BALDWINEveryone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
JAMES BALDWINAll art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWINThere is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
JAMES BALDWINPrecisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
JAMES BALDWINNo one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWINHistory is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
JAMES BALDWINIt’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINAny real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWINFor these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWIN