Quotes from James Baldwin

An artist's) role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.

I supposed he wouldn't start doubting her until he started doubting everything.

I returned here because I was afraid to

We had got on badly, partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride.

Time is always now. Everybody who has ever thought about his own life knows this. You don't make resolutions about something you are going to do next year. No! You decide to write a book: the book may be finished twenty years from now, but you've got to start it now.

Oh, women! There is no need, thank heaven, to have an opinion about women. Woman are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be bottomless, you know ?-and they can be shallow. And that dirty.

I'm not really interested in being what Americans call 'happy'.

Sin is the only heritage of the natural man...

There have been superficial changes, with results at best ambiguous and, at worst, disastrous. Morally, there has been no change at all and the moral change is the only real one.

Goddammit to hell, I'm sick of it. Can't I get a place to sleep without dragging it through the courts? I'm goddamn tired of battling every Tom, Dick, and Harry for what everyone else takes for granted. I'm tired!

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation (New York, 7 July 1956; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985)     It

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

And she began rather to envy the stocky girl with the crush on Frank Sinatra, since she would settle one day, obviously, for a great deal less, and probably turn out children as Detroit turned out cars and never sigh for an instant for what she had missed, having indeed never, and especially with a lifetime of moviegoing behind her, missed anything.

If you're an artist, you're guilty of a crime: not that you're aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don't admit are there.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won't destroy you. Part of the rage is this: it isn't only what is happening to you, but it's what's happening all around you all of the time, in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, the indifference and ignorance of the most white people in this country.

It is very nearly impossible . . . to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. --"They Can't Turn Back," in Mademoiselle (New York, Aug. 1960; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985)     The

I know that when certain powerful and blatant enemies of black people are shoveled, at last, into the ground I may feel a certain pity that they spent their lives so badly, but I certainly do not mourn their passing, nor, when I hear that they are ailing, do I pray for their recovery.

All men, clearly, are primitive, but it can be doubted that that all men are primitive in the same way

To tell everything is a very effective means of keeping secrets. Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.

The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. --"The Negro Child—His Self-Image," in Saturday Review (New York, 21 Dec. 1963; repr. in The Price of the Ticket as "A Talk to Teachers," 1985)     Europe

YaÅŸama kar?? sorumluyuz: Ä°çinden geldiÄŸimiz ve bir gün geri döneceÄŸimiz o ürkünç karanl?ktaki tek küçük fenerdir yaÅŸam.

Writing for me must be a very controlled exercise, formed by passions and hopes.

He had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty. To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake.

His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul's arms.