51 Quotes About James-baldwin

The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it.

To begin with, the room was not large enough for two. It looked out on a small courtyard. 'Looked out' means only that the room had two windows, against which the courtyard malevolently pressed, encroaching day by day, as though it had confused itself with a jungle.

But she saw nothing in my eyes—she stared at me as though I had made a long journey on a white charger all the way to her prison house.

Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker," said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, "and so you can stand less and less.

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

When we admit and deal with difference; when we deal with the deep bitterness; when we deal with the horror of even our different nightmares; when we turn them and look at them, it’s like looking at death: hard but possible. If you look at it directly without embracing it, then there is much less that you can ever be made to fear.

The people did not go away, of course; once a people arise, they never go away (a fact which should be included in the Marine handbook).

Whereas Jesus and his disciples were distrusted by the state largely because they respected the poor and shared everything, the fundamentalists of the present hour would appear not to know that the poor exist.

...love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.