787 Quotes by James Baldwin

One of these days, 'he said.' Everything bad will happen—one of these days.

Everybody’s journey is individual. You you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

You know, fathers just have a way of putting everything together.

Every day in the city, on the contrary — and I grew up in the city — involves a subtle divorce from reality. There is something a little terrifying about being forty stories in the air and looking around you, and you see nothing but walls, other skyscrapers, and you don't dare look down. And if you are on the ground, if you want to see the sky, you must make an effort of the will and look up. And if you do that, you are likely to be carried off to Bellevue — but that is another story.

No one in the city, except your immediate family — not always they— says good morning.

Know from whence you came because if you know from whence you came, there is no limit to where you can go.

There is a sanctity involved with bringing a child into this world, it is better than bombing one out of it.

Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models.

It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn't, by an act of the imagination, made one's own.