American novelist (1960- )
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
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
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
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
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
Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
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"
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Devil Finds Work
Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
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
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
Whenever he was uncomfortable -- which was often -- his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
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
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
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