The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
James A. BaldwinThe wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.
James A. BaldwinThe occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.
James A. BaldwinBeing in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.
James A. Baldwin