Quotes from baldwin james viii

They do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing a game and that we do it to shock them.

In any of the world's cities, on a winter night, a boy can be bought for the price of a beer and the promise of warm blankets.

The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it.... The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford.

For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted.

Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone.

There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood–one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die.

The tendrils of shame clutched at them, however they turned, all the dirty words they knew commented on all they did.