Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. – James Baldwin
If youre treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real theyre real for you whether theyre real or not. – James Baldwin
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field. – James Baldwin
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience. – James Baldwin
For one seldom hears a genuine laugh nowadays, and much of the phraseology of laughter is a mere fashion of speech. There are many people whose sides have never ached from over-indulgence in the outward expression of mirth…. With some persons a wheeze or a chuckle is the utmost they can compass. – “Laughter,” in The Spectator for the week ending Saturday, January 19, 1889