James Baldwin

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.

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.

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

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

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.