787 Quotes by James Baldwin

At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

Books taught me that things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me to everyone who is alive and who had ever been alive.

People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not- so grotesquely- resemble human beings.

When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.

When the book comes out it may hurt you – but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

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.