James Baldwin Quotes

Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past...

Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made, the same option for all grown-ups to make: to be one of three types of Americans — those who embrace liberty for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent — and only the first do the work of creating a more perfect union.

I think we need some new Christmas carols with a more modern approach. Of course, I wouldn't abandon the religious theme completely. How about "Holy Christ, the Christmas Tree's on Fire"? Or "Jesus, Can You Believe It's Christmas Again?" This ought to get the ball rolling; I'm hoping you people will take it from here.

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

I don't really need to stand out, there's room for everyone. Although I haven't built a niche yet, I'm just writing love songs.

I’ve been through hell and back, and I’m grateful for every scar, I look at the woman I was in my 20s and I see a young lady growing into confidence but intent on pleasing everyone around her. I now feel so much more beautiful, so much sexier, so much more interesting. And so much more powerful.

I was born in a poor country. I was poor, but I lived all my life with what I had. I didn’t spend more than I had. Cape Verde is not the only place where there are poor people

Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing — not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.

But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.

Oh, I really wish people just thronged around to see your first film. Just a sec. Wanna know... ...Original story, or pirated?

I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat, and a lamp blazed up inside, showing me who I really was. I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp.

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural... Whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.