If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I
Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's n...
I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anyt...
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 kissin...
I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his last retreat. I was to destroy this room and give to Giovanni a new and better life. This life could only be my own, which, in order t...
I remember what it was like...to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting-everything- was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.James Baldwin
I must believe, I must believe, that the heavy grace of God, which has brought me to this point, is all that can carry me out of it.
I know, in any case, that the most crucial time in my own development came when I was forced to recognize that I was a kind of a bastard of the West; when I followed the line of my past, I did not fin...
I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch—I hoped to drive out fire with fire.
I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that way, and polish me off that way. And yet, of course, at the same time, I being spat on and defined a...
I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to the white world and the relationship, not a whit less pa...
He was one of those people who, quick to laugh, are slow to anger; so that their anger, when it comes, is all the more impressive, seeming to leap from some unsuspected crevice like a fire which will...
He is not here for anything he has done. He has always known that, but now he knows it with a difference. At meals, in the showers, up and down the stairs, in the evening, just before everyone is lock...
Have you been to the police?’ Richard asked. ‘Yes.’ She made a gesture of disgust and rose and walked to the window. ‘They said it happens all the time – coloured men running off from their families....
From my own point of view, the fact of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete forever any question of Christian superiority, except in technological terms. White
Finally, we are confronted with the psychology and tradition of the country; if the Negro vote is so easily bought and sold, it is because it has been treated with so little respect; since no Negro da...
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, s...
Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, what I want,but they know they would not like to be black here.If they know th...
Do you come in here often? asked Giovanni suddenly.No, I said, not very often.But you will come, he teased, with a wonderful, mocking light on his face, more often now?I stammered: Why?Ah! cried Giova...