Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
JAMES BALDWINTrust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
JAMES BALDWINIt’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
JAMES BALDWINYouth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
JAMES BALDWINThere are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
JAMES BALDWINIt was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWINHatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWINLove 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 BALDWINThe role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
JAMES BALDWINAnyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWINPeople who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
JAMES BALDWINKnow from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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 BALDWINI can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES 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 BALDWIN