The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
James A. BaldwinIt is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.
James A. BaldwinPeople don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.
James A. BaldwinIt is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
James A. BaldwinThe civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world.
James A. Baldwin