Quotes from James Baldwin

I felt so aimless?like a tennis ball, bouncing, bouncing?I began to wonder where I'd land. I began to feel that I'd, somewhere, missed the boat. She looked at me. You know the boat I'm talking about. They make movies about it where I come from. It's the boat that, when you miss it, it's a boat, but when it comes in, it's a ship.

It's not really a mystery except it's always a mystery about people.

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.

And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up.

It is part of the price the Negro pays for his position in this society that, as Richard Wright points out, he is almost always acting. A Negro learns to gauge precisely what reaction the alien person facing him desires, and he produces it with disarming artlessness. The friends I had, growing up and going to work, grew more bitter every day; and, conversely, they learned to hide this bitterness and to fit into the pattern Gentile and Jew alike had fixed for them.

What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them.

For the horrors of the American Negro's life there has been almost no language.

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats—the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced.

She moved in a silent ferocity of dignity which barely escaped being ludicrous.

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see. The language of the camera is the language of our dreams.

Where is your life, Gabriel?' she asked, after a despairing pause, 'Where is it? Ain't it all done gone for nothing? Where's your branches? Where's your fruit?' He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with her thumbnail.

his eyes, behind his glasses, were like the eyes of a dying a man who looks everywhere for healing.

Giovanni looked at me. And this look made me feel that no one in my life had ever looked at me directly before.

despair, whether or not can be taken home and placed in the family table, must always be respected. Despair can make one monstrous, but it can also make one noble.

Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? -- and that shallow.

Not only was I not born to be a slave: I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave-master. They had, the masters, incontestably, the rope—in time, with enough, they would hang themselves with it. They were not to hang me : I was to see to that.

I guess it can't be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they're making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.

under his beauty and his bravado, terror, and a terrible desire to please; dreadfully moving, and it made me want, in anguish, to reach out and comfort him.

And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up.

You stop that,' he said, in a voice which he did not recognise. 'You stop that. You stop trying to kill me. It's not my fault I'm white. It's not my fault you're black. It's not my fault he's dead.

Her long narrow eyes darkened with whatever it was they were beginning to see.

Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.

It was as though I were yelling up to Heaven and Heaven would not hear me. And if Heaven would not hear me- to wash me, to make me clean- then utter disaster was my portion.