Top 57 Quotes by James A. Baldwin

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

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.

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.