When the book comes out it may hurt you — but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself. – James Baldwin
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. – James Baldwin
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side. – 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
It sometimes happens at the end of a dinner, when jokes and walnuts are cracked together, that the paternity of some trite quotation is put in question, and at once the wit of the whole company is set wool-gathering. – Frederic Swartwout Cozzens, “Phrases and Filberts,” Sayings, Wise and Otherwise