Quotes from baldwin james ii

I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I do not expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.

Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody -- if it is, God's days have got to be numbered.

One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found -- and it is found in terrible places.

One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and one's own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, which has driven so many people mad.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there's no possibility of achieving the life you want.

The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American, be he/she legally or actually Black or White ... I was trying to locate myself within a specific inheritance and to use that inheritance, precisely, to claim the birthright from which that inheritance had so brutally and specifically excluded me.

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.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.