787 Quotes by James Baldwin

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.

I must believe, I must believe, that the heavy grace of God, which has brought me to this point, is all that can carry me out of it.

There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.

You don’t realize that you’re intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it bring must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.

It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life – without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, then, is activated by what might be called a theological terror, the terror of damnation; and the spirit that breathes in this book, hot, self-righteous, fearful, is not different from that spirit of medieval times which sought to exorcize evil by burning witches; and is not different from that terror which activates a lynch mob.

You face reality, not the lights. The lights go off as quickly as they come on.

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.