American novelist (1960- )
It must be remembered that the oppressed and the oppressor are bound together within the same society; they accept the same criteria, they share the same beliefs, they both alike depend on the same reality.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
But just as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever -- and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
JAMES BALDWIN
"As Much Truth As One Can Bear", New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962
His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom—bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
My springs is getting rusty, sleeping single like I do.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
It was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
The best that he had ever managed in bed, so far, had been the maximum of relief with the minimum of hostility.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Negro life is in fact as debased and impoverished as our theology claims.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
I bet you think we're in a g***am park. You don't know we're in one of the world's great jungles. You don't know that behind all them damn dainty trees and sh*t, people are screwing and fixing and dying. Dying, baby, right now while we move through this darkness in this man's taxicab. And you don't know it, even when you're told; you don't know it, even when you see it.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Whenever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the tension of a silence filled with things unutterable.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality—for this touchstone can be only oneself.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of the imagination, made one’s own.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son