People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind.
James A. BaldwinRemember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.
James A. BaldwinIt happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.
James A. BaldwinLove him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
James A. BaldwinPeople can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.
James A. BaldwinWell,โ I said, โParis is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isnโt what you feel in New York โ โHe was smiling. I stopped. โWhat do you feel in New York?โ he asked. โPerhaps you feel,โ I told him, โall the time to come. Thereโs such power there, everything is in such movement. You canโt help wonderingโI canโt help wonderingโwhat it will all be likeโ many years from now.
James A. Baldwin