All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. BaldwinEverything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
James A. BaldwinEvery legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James A. BaldwinAmericans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.
James A. Baldwin