James Baldwin Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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Painters have often taught writers how to see.

James Baldwin
My face is like a face you have seen many times.

James Baldwin
Boy, ain't it time you was thinking about your soul?

James Baldwin
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

James Baldwin
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

James Baldwin
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

James Baldwin
A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

James Baldwin
This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

James Baldwin
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

James Baldwin
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

James Baldwin
You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

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

James Baldwin
If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.

James Baldwin
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

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

James Baldwin
You never get the book you wanted, you settle for the book you get.

James Baldwin
I'm going to have my baby and I'm going to bring him up to be a man.

James Baldwin
Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.

James Baldwin
Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

James Baldwin
If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

James Baldwin
You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

James Baldwin
The root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

James Baldwin
The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

James Baldwin
Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.

James Baldwin
When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.

James Baldwin
The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

James Baldwin
The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose.

James Baldwin
Every form is difficult, no one is easier than another. They all kick your ass.

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

James Baldwin
The future is like heaven—everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

James Baldwin