787 Quotes by James Baldwin

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.

The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope and I take the blue envelope which Jacques has sent me and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet, as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me.

He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again—waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen.

I was introduced, they greeted me with a genuine cordiality and respect - and the respect increased my fright, for it meant that they expected something of me, that I knew in my heart, for their sakes, I could not give - and we sat down.