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7c7e007
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But I felt that it was my heart which was broken. Something had broken in me to make me so cold and so perfectly still and far away.
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distant
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
heartbroken
detached
dissociation
cold
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James Baldwin |
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1ae8140
|
A big, sandy-haired man held his daughter on his shoulders, showing her the Statue of Liberty. I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me. And the American flag was flying from the top of the ship, above my head. I had seen the French flag drive the French into the most unspeakable frenzies, I had seen the flag which was nominally mine used to dignify the vilest purposes: now I would never, ..
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James Baldwin |
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50cdc44
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Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men. Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because they had to put up with the ways of women--and this from the time that they were born until the day they died.
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James Baldwin |
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ad2d749
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Nothing is more unbearable, once has it, than freedom.
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James Baldwin |
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bf42c37
|
We live in a nation of pigs and murderers.
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racism-in-america
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James Baldwin |
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4ecb50c
|
I don't believe there's a white man in this country, baby, who can get his dick hard, without he hear some nigger moan.
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police-officers
police-brutality
racism-in-america
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James Baldwin |
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af06602
|
We spend vast amounts of our time an emotional energy in learning how not to be natural and in eluding the trap of our own nature and it therefore becomes very difficult to know exactly what is meant when we speak of the unnatural. It is not possible to have it both ways, to use nature at one time as the final arbiter of human conduct and at another to oppose her as angrily as we do.
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James Baldwin |
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77cdf95
|
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the on..
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James Baldwin |
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1b20dd1
|
I could not discuss what had happened to me with anyone, I could not even admit it to myself; and, while I never thought about it, it remained, nevertheless, at the bottom of my mind, as still and as awful as a decomposing corpse. And it changed, it thickened, it soured the atmosphere of my mind.
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James Baldwin |
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1ace8a8
|
he was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.
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James Baldwin |
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cb50d21
|
On days like this," Cass said, suddenly, "I remember what it was like--I think I remember--to be young, very young." She looked up at him. "When everything, touching and tasting--everything--was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete."
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James Baldwin |
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830eb0d
|
The American idea of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American idea of masculinity. Idea may not be the precise word, for the idea of one's sexuality can only with great violence be divorced or distanced from the idea of the self. Yet something resembling this rupture has certainly occurred (and is occurring) in American life, and violence has been the American daily bread since we have heard of America. This violence, furthermore, is ..
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James Baldwin |
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a6b7b01
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Yves did not like showers, he preferred long, scalding baths, with newspapers, cigarettes, and whiskey on a chair next to the bathtub, and with Eric nearby to talk to, to shampoo his hair, and to scrub his back.
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James Baldwin |
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4dcb241
|
I smiled and I really felt at that moment that Judas and the Savior had met in me. [...] And yet even this was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me again--unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality.
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James Baldwin |
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90a90cc
|
The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them--could not forgive.
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James Baldwin |
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8e9ea3e
|
He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
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James Baldwin |
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97e27bc
|
The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road--and the road has a trick of being the most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright--and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden.
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James Baldwin |
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1db7818
|
We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.
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James Baldwin |
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001a502
|
Oedipus did not remember the thongs that bound his feet; nevertheless the marks they left testified to that doom toward which his feet were leading him. The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and the darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that drives him wherever he thinks to take flight.
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James Baldwin |
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c854d27
|
We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and th spectacle we presented, two grown men, jostling each other on the wide sidewalk, and aiming the cherry-pips, as though they were spitballs, into each other's facesm must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it spra..
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lovers
love
paris
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James Baldwin |
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a55910f
|
We held each other so close that we might indeed have been one body.
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romance
love
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James Baldwin |
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93ca279
|
The root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much had the white man as simply as want the out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way. The root of the white man's hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind.
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racism
politics
race
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James Baldwin |
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6649ef2
|
For, you see, he had found his center, his own center, inside him: and it showed. He wasn't anybody's nigger. And that's a crime, in this fucking free country. You're suppose to be somebody's nigger. And if you're nobody's nigger, you're a bad nigger: and that's what the cops decided when Fonny moved downtown.
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James Baldwin |
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902a0d1
|
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You are not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
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history
black-in-america
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James Baldwin |
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bba56a6
|
And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was discovering this in the way, I suppose, that everybody does, but having tried, endlessly, to do something about it. You attach yourself to someone, or you allow someone to attach themselves to you. This person is not for you, a..
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James Baldwin |
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b2338ad
|
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
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James Baldwin |
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5ef834d
|
One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself - that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving
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James Baldwin |
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f319a87
|
The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.
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racism
fear
life
white-people
superiority
bigotry
beliefs
race-relations
inferiority
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James Baldwin |
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3f5dfbb
|
Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous--dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.
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morality
danger
ideas
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James Baldwin |
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262d8ea
|
I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room.
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James Baldwin |
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400e807
|
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.
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James Baldwin |
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c255a38
|
Nothing tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither kindness, nor scorn, nor hatred, nor love. She had never thought of prayer. It was unimaginable that she would ever bend her knees and come crawling along a dusty floor to anybody's altar, weeping for forgiveness. Perhaps her sin was so extreme that it could not be forgiven; perhaps her pride was so great that she did not need forgiveness. She had fallen from that high estate which Go..
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James Baldwin |
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79e2e86
|
Whereas Jesus and his disciples were distrusted by the state largely because they respected the poor and shared everything, the fundamentalists of the present hour would appear not to know that the poor exist.
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religion
james-baldwin
humanitarianism
hypocrisy
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James Baldwin |
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71b8cb0
|
I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.
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James Baldwin |
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3ecf0ba
|
John's heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God's minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father.
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James Baldwin |
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c08011e
|
But he had the tendency of all wildly disorganised people to suppose that the lives of others were tamer and less sensual and more cerebral than his own.
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James Baldwin |
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5c43be2
|
They have never put it into words, they cannot; but each absence is a threat. They never felt this way in New York - they moved all over New York. Here each is afraid that one of the others will get into some terrible trouble before he is seen again, and before anyone can help him. It is the spirit of the people, the eyes which endlessly watch them, eyes which never meet their eyes. Something like lust, something like hatred, seems to hover..
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hatred
streets
lust
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James Baldwin |
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b0e0460
|
You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important.
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James Baldwin |
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c26b98b
|
In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
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|
understanding
racism
history
past
blacks
whites
race-relations
race
|
James Baldwin |
|
fe66d87
|
A real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things that can be named.
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|
life
mercy
humble
|
James Baldwin |
|
325aab1
|
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.
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James Baldwin |
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a0095cc
|
It's a great city, Paris, a beautiful city--and--it was very good for me.
|
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city-of-light
cosmopolitan-cities
paris-attacks
france
paris
|
James Baldwin |
|
f53e521
|
The first love disappears, but never goes. That ache becomes reconciliation.
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|
heartbreak
love
first-love
|
James Baldwin |
|
a35880f
|
Fonny had found something that he could do, that he wanted to do, and this saved him from the death that was waiting to overtake the children of our age. Though the death took many forms, though people died early in many different ways, the death itself was very simple and the cause was simple, too: as simple as a plague: the kids had been told that they weren't worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. They struggled, they ..
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James Baldwin |