JAMES BALDWIN QUOTES IV

American novelist (1960- )

I can conceive of no Negro native to this country who has not, by the age of puberty, been irreparably scarred by the conditions of his life.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: age


It is not Bigger whom we fear, since his appearance among us makes our victory certain. It is the others, who smile, who go to church, who give no cause for complaint, whom we sometimes consider with amusement, with pity, even with affection--and in whose faces we sometimes surprise the merest arrogant hint of hatred, the faintest, withdrawn, speculative shadow of contempt--who make us uneasy; whom we cajole, threaten, flatter, fear; who to us remain unknown, though we are not (we feel with both relief and hostility and with bottomless confusion) unknown to them.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: appearance


She seemed to listen to life as though life were the most cunning and charming of confidence men: knowing perfectly well that she was being conned, she, nevertheless, again and again, gave the man the money for the Brooklyn Bridge. She never gained possession of the bridge, of course, but she certainly learned how to laugh. And the tiny lines in her face had been produced as much by laughter as by loss.

JAMES BALDWIN

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

Tags: life


The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: faith


Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: kids


Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Nation, July 7, 1956

Tags: respect


You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we’re what we are.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: misery


All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: maturity


I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

JAMES BALDWIN

address delivered at Kalamazoo College, February 1960

Tags: God


Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.

JAMES BALDWIN

Blues for Mister Charlie

Tags: cruelty


Something like lust, something like hatred, seems to hover in the air along the country roads, shifting like mist or steam, but always there, gripping the city streets like fog, making every corner a dangerous corner.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: lust


The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Devil Finds Work

Tags: civilization


You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

JAMES BALDWIN

interview with Julius Lester, New York Times, May 27, 1984

Tags: intelligence


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.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: love


I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room

Tags: thought


It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room

Tags: despair


Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

JAMES BALDWIN

"In Search of a Majority"

Tags: love


Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: death


One of the most American of attributes: the inability to believe that time is real. It is this inability which makes them so romantic about the nature of society, and it is this inability which has led them into a total confusion about the nature of experience.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: nature


The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: children