JAMES BALDWIN QUOTES III

American novelist (1960- )

It is the question of Bigger's humanity which is at stake, the relationship in which he stands to all other Americans--and, by implication, to all people--and it is precisely this question which it cannot clarify, with which it cannot, in fact, come to any coherent terms. He is the monster created by the American republic, the present awful sum of generations of oppression; but to say that he is a monster is to fall into the trap of making him subhuman and he must, therefore, be made representative of a way of life which is real and human in precise ratio to the degree to which it seems to us monstrous and strange.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: monster


I watch the men in the hospital, in the streets--some of these men are pretty awful people, they really are slimy sewer scum, do anything to pay down on the car, to meet the damn car payments--they don't care about women, or men, or nobody. It just seems so hopeless.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: Men


The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: life


The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Price of the Ticket

Tags: belief


Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: Heaven


Whenever we encounter him in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: faith


Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld all blacks together into a mighty fist.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: dreams


Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.

JAMES BALDWIN

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Tags: belief


And then they walked through the town, in which not even a cat seemed to be moving; and everywhere they walked, the cathedral was watching them.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: respect


One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: life


Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room


The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: faith


Something like lust, something like hatred, seems to hover in the air along the country roads, shifting like mist or steam, but always there, gripping the city streets like fog, making every corner a dangerous corner.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: lust


Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: love


The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: secret


The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: children


The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Devil Finds Work

Tags: civilization


Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: death