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
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. – James Baldwin
The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land. – James Baldwin
Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. – James Baldwin