People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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 BALDWINYou don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
JAMES BALDWINArtists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES BALDWINI am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWINLiterature is indispensable to the world.
JAMES BALDWINMost of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
JAMES BALDWINOur crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
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 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 BALDWINIf the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
JAMES BALDWINThe moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWINIf I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWINThe artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
JAMES BALDWIN