James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 12

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• If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

  James A. Baldwin

  Imagination, Needs, Want

  4 Copy quote

• I was in his hands, he called me by the thunder at my ear. I was in his hands: I was being changed; all that I could do was cling to him. I did not realize, until I realized it, that I was also kissing him, that everything was breaking and changing and turning in me and moving toward him.

  James A. Baldwin

  Moving, Kissing, Hands

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• Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

  James A. Baldwin

  Spiritual, Arrogance, Atheism

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind" by James A. Baldwin in "The New Yorker" (November 17, 1962), republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in James A. Baldwin "The Fire Next Time", 1963.

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• After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

  James A. Baldwin

  Bridges, Paris, My Best Friend

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• I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

  James A. Baldwin

  Childhood, Usual, Stories

  "Autobiographical Notes" by James A. Baldwin (1952), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), archive.nytimes.com.

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• I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, World, Wonder

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• One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

  James A. Baldwin

  Darkness, Return, Responsible

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

  8 Copy quote

• A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

  James A. Baldwin

  Humanity, Atheism, Causes

  4 Copy quote

• Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be-- or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it.

  James A. Baldwin

  May, Definitions, Way

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• Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Recovery, Justice

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• Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

  James A. Baldwin

  Acceptance, Thinking, Origin Of Life

  7 Copy quote

• The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

  James A. Baldwin

  Distance, Play, Roles

  "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy". Esquire, May 1961.

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• After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.

  James A. Baldwin

  Memories, Loss, People

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• He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.

  James A. Baldwin

  Nice, Gun, Men

  "Mamie Till's warning still holds true in a racist world" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. April 8, 2012.

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• And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

  James A. Baldwin

  Sky, World, Trouble

  7 Copy quote

• An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Black, Faces

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• The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational Love, Faces, Lovers

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• It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.

  James A. Baldwin

  School, Years, Desire

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• At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.

  James A. Baldwin

  Mean, Race, Taste

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• No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

  James A. Baldwin

  Time, Firsts, Happens

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• A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Balance, Weight

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• We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fake People, Deeds, Belief

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• Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.

  James A. Baldwin

  Theatre, Behind The Scenes, Illusion

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

  James A. Baldwin

  Grief, Keys, Punishment

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• People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Treated, Various

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