JAMES BALDWIN QUOTES III

American novelist (1960- )

Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: church


The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: life


Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room


I watch the men in the hospital, in the streets--some of these men are pretty awful people, they really are slimy sewer scum, do anything to pay down on the car, to meet the damn car payments--they don't care about women, or men, or nobody. It just seems so hopeless.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: Men


A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: civilization


The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: secret


You took the best, so why not take the rest?

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


And then they walked through the town, in which not even a cat seemed to be moving; and everywhere they walked, the cathedral was watching them.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country


It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: America


Whenever we encounter him in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: faith


Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: Heaven


One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: life


How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: respect


People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: character


His dangerous, overwhelming lust for life had failed to involve him in anything deeper than perhaps half a dozen extremely casual acquaintanceships in about as many bars.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: life


He had often watched her as she crossed the floor in her checkered apron, her face a dark mask behind which belligerence battled with humility. This was in her eyes which never for an instant lost their wariness and which were always ready, within a split second, to turn black and lightless with contempt.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: contempt


Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: love


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


The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Price of the Ticket

Tags: belief