Quotes from James Baldwin

In spite of the Puritan-Yankee equation of virtue with well-being, Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any very striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly did not work that way for black Christians.

Birden Giovanni'nin beni neden istediÄŸini, neden bu son s???na??na getirdiÄŸini anlad?m. Bu oday? y?kacak, Giovanni'ye yeni ve daha iyi bir yaÅŸam armaÄŸan edecektim. Bu yaÅŸam ancak benim kendi yaÅŸam?m olabilirdi ve Giovanni'nin yaÅŸam?n? deÄŸiÅŸtirebilmesi için benim yaÅŸam?m?n da bu odan?n bir parças? olmas? gerekecekti.

I remembered his older brother, who had died in Sicily, in battle for the free world- he had barely had time to see Sicily before he died and had assuredly never seen the free world.

Where you lead me, I said, I'll follow. He laughed. Baby. Baby. Baby. I love you. And I'm going to build us a table and a whole lot of folks going to be eating off it for a long, long time to come.

It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt. No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I

The author must destroy our myths and give us back our histories, which will destroy our attitudes and give us back our personalities.

I've never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the same of proud Puerto Ricans, who don't understand what's happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail.

As pessoas que lembram correm o risco de enlouquecer de dor, a dor da morte de sua inocência, a recorrer eternamente; as que esquecem se arriscam a mergulhar em outra espécie de loucura, a loucura de negar a dor e odiar a inocência; e o mundo basicamente se divide entre loucos que lembram e loucos que esquecem.

Bloodlust is the only real tribute the mediocre are capable of bringing to the extraordinary

He leaned up a little and watched her face. Her face would now be, forever, more mysterious and impenetrable than the face of any stranger. Strangers' faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

It had been written because he was afraid, afraid of things dark, strange, dangerous, difficult, and deep.

It had not really been written to make money—if only it had been! It had been written because he was afraid, afraid of things dark, strange, dangerous, difficult, and deep.

Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away.

the whole motion of the figure is torment. It seemed a very strange figure for such a young kid to do, or, at least, it seemed strange until you thought about it.

the look in his eyes was so bottomlessly bitter it was almost benevolent.

All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.

Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.

It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.

The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.

The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes—I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether—is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened. One wishes they would say so more often.

His face looked as though it were plunging into water. I couldn't touch him. I wanted so to touch him. ... But he was far away from me now, all by himself. I waited for him to come back.

What you people don't know,' she said, 'is that life is a bitch, baby. It's the biggest hype going. You don't have any experience in paying your dues and it's going to be rough on you, baby, when the deal goes down. There're lots of back dues to be collected, and I know damn well you haven't got a penny saved.

Trouble is, I feel too paternal towards you, you son of a bitch." "That's the trouble with all you white bastards.