American novelist (1960- )
Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever -- and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
I bet you think we're in a g***am park. You don't know we're in one of the world's great jungles. You don't know that behind all them damn dainty trees and sh*t, people are screwing and fixing and dying. Dying, baby, right now while we move through this darkness in this man's taxicab. And you don't know it, even when you're told; you don't know it, even when you see it.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom—bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Whenever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the tension of a silence filled with things unutterable.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Time: the whisper beneath that word is death.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
The tendrils of shame clutched at them, however they turned, all the dirty words they knew commented on all they did.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWIN
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy", Esquire, May 1961
In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
We cannot escape our origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key--could we but find it--to all we later become.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality—for this touchstone can be only oneself.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
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.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
But no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology ... because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness.
JAMES BALDWIN
interview with Julius Lester, New York Times, May 27, 1984
Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. 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. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
See, I couldn't stand these chicks I was making it with, and I was working real hard at my music, and man, I was lonely. You come off a gig, you be tired, and you'd already taken as much sh*t as you could stand from the managers and the people in the room you were working and you'd be off to make some down scene with some pasty white-faced b*tch. And so you'd make the scene and somehow you'd wake up in the morning and the chick would be beside you, alive and well, and dying to make the scene again and somehow you'd manage not to strangle her.
JAMES BALDWIN
Blues for Mister Charlie
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.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWIN
"As Much Truth As One Can Bear", New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962