787 Quotes by James Baldwin

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.

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

A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.