People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.
James A. BaldwinAn identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.
James A. BaldwinThere is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform
James A. BaldwinAllegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.
James A. BaldwinIn overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.
James A. Baldwin