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. – James Baldwin
Experience is a private, and a very largely speechless affair. – James Baldwin
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. – James Baldwin
Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden. – 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