Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
James A. BaldwinThere is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
James A. BaldwinWe are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.
James A. BaldwinNothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
James A. BaldwinIt is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.
James A. Baldwin