James Baldwin Saved my Life

“Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.”
― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

“Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.”
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years”
― James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.”
― James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.”
― James Baldwin

“Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.”
― James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

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