James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 14

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• She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.

  James A. Baldwin

  Music, Voice, Twenties

  4 Copy quote

• Well,’ I said, ‘Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York — ’He was smiling. I stopped. ‘What do you feel in New York?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps you feel,’ I told him, ‘all the time to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like— many years from now.

  James A. Baldwin

  New York, Years, Paris

  4 Copy quote

• Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.

  James A. Baldwin

  Heart, Eye, Light

  7 Copy quote

• There was no room in God's army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother or father, sister or brother, sweetheart or friend above God's will. Let the church cry amen to this!

  James A. Baldwin

  Mother, Brother, Father

  7 Copy quote

• The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.

  James A. Baldwin

  Determination, Mean, Lessons

  4 Copy quote

• At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.

  James A. Baldwin

  Morning, Wine, Drunk

  4 Copy quote

• Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

  James A. Baldwin

  Clothes, Sorrow, Important

  4 Copy quote

• You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

  James A. Baldwin

  Gratitude, Pain, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, Surrender, Frame Of Reference

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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. Baldwin

  Beautiful, People, Ugly

  4 Copy quote

• You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, Dark, Voyages

  4 Copy quote

• Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.

  James A. Baldwin

  Heaven, Legends, Crime

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

  4 Copy quote

• Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, People, Waiting

  4 Copy quote

• An 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. Baldwin

  Fall, Identity, Stranger

  7 Copy quote

• A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

  James A. Baldwin

  Ghetto, Cities, Way

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. October 16, 2007.

  7 Copy quote

• To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

  James A. Baldwin

  Identity, Way, Achieve

  5 Copy quote

• It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

  James A. Baldwin

  America, Typical, Generations

  1955 Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

  4 Copy quote

• You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.' 'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.

  James A. Baldwin

  Boys, Thinking, Bigs

  4 Copy quote

• My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"

  James A. Baldwin

  Boys, African American, Littles

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

  4 Copy quote

• The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.

  James A. Baldwin

  Failure, Thinking, Lines

  24 Copy quote

• We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

  James A. Baldwin

  Goal, Minorities, Who We Are

  "Gay Rights Speech: What Should Obama Say Tonight?" by Jose Antonio Vargas, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

• There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Mean, Way, Facts

  4 Copy quote

• James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, History, May

  4 Copy quote

• Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Home, Odds, White

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

  6 Copy quote

• The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.

  James A. Baldwin

  Views, Generations, Students

  7 Copy quote

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