James Baldwin

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
― James Baldwin

It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays

People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.
― James Baldwin

In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others.
― James Baldwin

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
― James Baldwin

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

The impossible is the least that one can demand.
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.
― James Baldwin

Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
― James Baldwin