There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWINPeople don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
More James Baldwin Quotes
-
-
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
JAMES BALDWIN -
People 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 BALDWIN -
You 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 -
Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWIN -
There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
JAMES BALDWIN -
People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The 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 BALDWIN -
When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
JAMES BALDWIN -
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
JAMES BALDWIN -
If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWIN -
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
JAMES BALDWIN -
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWIN






