JAMES BALDWIN

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

"Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it."

"Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality."

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."

"Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?"

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

"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose."

"The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

"You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back."

"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

"No man is a devil in his own mind."

"People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception."

"Literature is indispensable to the world."

"I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do."

"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."

"Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both."

"Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind."

"The impossible is the least that one can demand."

"Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore."

"Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know."

"People can cry much easier than they can change."