James Baldwin

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
― James Baldwin

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
― James Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
― James Baldwin

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
― James Baldwin

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.
― James Baldwin