Baldwin Quotes

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black. ~ James Baldwin

Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform.
Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission ~ Judith-Victoria Douglas

It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen. ~ James Baldwin

Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take comfort from this thought. Yet there knocked in his heart the suspicion that the bottom did not really exist. ~ James Baldwin

I always equate wrestling to having been in the Marine Corps. ~ William Baldwin

No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt (112) ~ James Baldwin

I actually don't think there is machismo in America, unless it's the cowboy type - the silent, smoking brooder. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. ~ James Baldwin

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. ~ James Baldwin

In 2002, in this country, there was an observation that for the first time in America, more kids were actively pursuing skateboarding than baseball. ~ Stephen Baldwin

I don't think the negro problem can be discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this problem as if it were a thing apart ~ James Baldwin

Pythagoras took the next important step by subordinating the mere matter of nature to its essential principle of form and order, identifying the latter with reason or the soul. ~ James Mark Baldwin

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. ~ James Baldwin

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive. ~ James A. Baldwin

All my life, the naysayers have told me that I can't win because I'm a progressive ... because I'm a woman ... even because I'm a lesbian. ~ Tammy Baldwin

The American idea of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American idea of masculinity. Idea may not be the precise word, for the idea of one's sexuality can only with great violence be divorced or distanced from the idea of the self. Yet something resembling this rupture has certainly occurred (and is occurring) in American life, and violence has been the American daily bread since we have heard of America. This violence, furthermore, is not merely literal and actual but appears to be admired and lusted after, and the key to the American imagination.

All countries or groups make of their trials a legend or, as in the case of Europe, a dubious romance called 'history.' But no other country has ever made so successful and glamorous a romance out of genocide and slavery; therefore, perhaps, the word I am searching for is not idea, but ideal.

The American IDEAL, then, of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American IDEAL of masculinity. This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and f****t, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that is is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood. ~ James Baldwin

Intuition always has our best interest at heart. ~ Christina Baldwin

Don't think I don't know you love me. You believe we going to make it? ~ James Baldwin

My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It's not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their humanity as they're dying. Losing your memories, you lose so much of who you are as a person. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

Lying is an assignation of your nobility and personality ultimately defiling your soul ~ C. Dale Baldwin

It is a terrible thing, simply, to be trapped in one's history, and attempt, in the same motion (and in this, our life!) to accept, deny, reject, and redeem it--and, also, on whatever level, to profit from it. ~ James Baldwin

Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge - revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man. ~ James Baldwin

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed. ~ James A. Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. ~ James Baldwin

Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody--if it is, God's days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve--and do serve, in ways that they don't know--has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man. Or: if you were. ~ James Baldwin

You can tell Gov. Bush to rest assured that I'm not going to leave the country because we have to get him out of office and we have to get his brother out of office in 2004. We're not resting until we get that done. ~ Alec Baldwin

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life ~ James Baldwin

Life's too short not to have fun with what you wear. ~ Ireland Baldwin

I don't want to be throwing the football on the front yard when I'm 75. I mean, I'm not opposed to men doing that. But I don't think it's gonna work for me. ~ Alec Baldwin

When you're with someone, you want everything to be great. And that's the pressure that you put on, and what you just can't do. ~ Alec Baldwin

I was involved with drama departments since the 5th grade. I played at it. It was an escape. ~ Adam Baldwin

If there is a gay ghetto, then that's where James Baldwin is, and Thomas Mann is, and Virginia Woolf is, and that's the only place I would ever want to be. And that's not on the margins of the literary tradition: That's right at the heart of it. ~ Garth Greenwell

Anderson Cooper has a job to do. And that job is to try to reinforce his credibility in the gay community after the fact that you couldn't get him out of the closet for 10 years with a canister of tear gas. Now he's the sheriff; now he's running around writing everybody a ticket! ~ Alec Baldwin

I would never do another sitcom. It was so boring I wanted to pull my fingernails off. ~ Daniel Baldwin

I am so much of a mind now to be in the audience, to watch and to experience, and to feel, rather than having to get up and perform, I want my life to be less about performing. ~ Alec Baldwin

I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away. ~ James Baldwin

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world. ~ James Baldwin

If we understood ourselves better we would damage ourselves less. ~ James Baldwin

No one will die because of bad acting. No one will die because you missed a cue. We're all human beings. If mistakes are made, you figure out that you're going to live. ~ Kate Baldwin

Language cannot describe the scene that followed; the shouts, oaths, frantic gestures, taunts, replies, and little fights; and therefore I shall not attempt it. ~ Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

Steffi wasn't tired anymore. In fact, she felt invigorated. She was going to make it. She needed more of those kisses. ~ Kim Baldwin

You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back. ~ James Baldwin

This unceasing interplay between experience and narrative is a uniquely human attribute. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words. ~ Christina Baldwin

We've got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other's only hope. ~ James Baldwin

Frankly, it's depressing, each night sleeping in someone else's home. I miss having a roof to my name. Our situation isn't an 'All in the Family' cliche, but it's still easy to see reality in plain terms: I live with my in-laws, and I can't say when that will change. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

I picked up a small square shortbread biscuit and stared at it, noting the uneven angles, wishing it were a perfect square, but it was, after all, merely a baked good, and baked goods did not ordinarily form perfect squares. ~ Kathleen Baldwin

Without allegiance to the Constitution it doesn't matter one hill of beans which party is in power! ~ Chuck Baldwin

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ~ James Baldwin

All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever: it was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it. ~ James Baldwin

Now, for the first time, I began to be aware of my heart, the heart itself: and with this awareness, conscious terror came. I realized that I knew nothing whatever about the way we are put together; and I realized that what I did not know might be in the process of killing me. ~ James Baldwin

With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes. ~ James Baldwin

In my belief, a harvest is also a legacy, for very often what you reap is, in the way of small miracles, more than you consciously know you have sown. ~ Faith Baldwin

In the midst of overwhelming noise and distraction, the voice of story is calling us to remember our true selves. ~ Christina Baldwin

He was all over me like brown rice! ~ L'Poni Baldwin

Observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire. ~ James Baldwin

If you do get married, get a prenup. It's not about money at all. It's about having a document that states how you'll dissolve your marriage while you still have a shred of respect for each other. ~ Alec Baldwin

No matter how shut in we are by weather, by physical handicaps or by such mental conditions as we manufacture for ourselves, we are still free people as long as the mind functions, the imagination is stirred and the desire to reach out, to experience, feel and know, is with us; as long as the heart beats and with it the pulses of love, interest, and empathy for and with other people. ~ Faith Baldwin

God, it was hot! Forget about frying an egg on the sidewalk; this kind of heat would fry an egg inside the chicken. ~ Rachel Caine

I tell people, if you really want me to look that good, why don't you cough up about $2 million more and hire Alec or Billy? If you want me to do it, this is what you get. ~ Daniel Baldwin

They knew his taxi better than they knew him, if you see what I mean. People always know the outside better than they know the inside. ~ James Baldwin

Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going. ~ Faith Baldwin

I'm very focused on the world and my career and my Porsche turbo and making money and Stevie B. Inc. I'm just living according to the standards of the world. ~ Stephen Baldwin

I think it's really terrifying that a country based on the foundations and ideals of God, is now systematically removing God from everything. Everything! ~ Stephen Baldwin

2005 opens with the promise of a number of substantial direct private investments that can swiftly transform the economy and set all sectors on a pronounced upward curve. ~ Baldwin Spencer

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they're good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you'd want to talk to about a book. They hate it by that point; they've already moved on to a new lover. Besides, the author never knows what the book is about anyway. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. ~ James A. Baldwin

I don't need to be married to Georgia O'Keeffe or Lillian Hellman, but I like being with a woman I can look up to. ~ Alec Baldwin

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping. ~ Faith Baldwin

They went on working for the promise of a pension and their "health benefits," which was ironic in that almost any other job would benefit their health better than any doctor's pills. ~ James Baldwin

It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things. ~ James Baldwin

No man can say whether you are happy or not until you die, for no man knows misfortunes may overtake you or what misery may be yours in place of all this slendor. ~ James Baldwin

Do we understand each other?' 'Yes.' 'I'm so glad.' Baldwin's mouth lifted into a smile. 'Answer your e-mail while you're at it. I send you messages. You don't answer. It's aggravating.' I nodded, afraid that if I opened my mouth, detailed instructions on just what he could do with his e-mail might pop out. Baldwin ~ Deborah Harkness

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. ~ James A. Baldwin

I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for? ~ James Baldwin

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world. ~ James Baldwin

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live. ~ James A. Baldwin

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. ~ James Baldwin

I know, in any case, that the most crucial time in my own development came when I was forced to recognize that I was a kind of a bastard of the West; when I followed the line of my past, I did not find myself in Europe but in Africa. And this meant that in some subtle way, in a really profound way, I brought to Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to the stones of Paris, to the cathedral at Chartres, and to the Empire State Building, a special attitude. These were not really my creations, they did not contain my history; I might search in them in vain forever for any reflection of myself. ~ James Baldwin

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society. ~ James Baldwin

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently. ~ James A. Baldwin

When I am sitting home, and I am happy and I have my TV show and I don't need to work and I'm married now and I like to be in line by my pool with my yoga instructor wife and eating fruit and taking in the sun, then life is good. ~ Alec Baldwin

Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare. ~ James Baldwin

The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or so, and you run into Kafka, or Calvino, or Cortazar, and you say, well that is IT. And then you stroll through what Updike called the grottos of Ulysses, and after that you consort with Baldwin or Welty or Spencer, or Morrison, or Bellow or Fitzgerald and then back to W. Shakespeare, Esq; the champ, and all the time you feel the excitement of being in the presence of IT. And when you yourself spend the good time writing, you are not different in kind than any of these people, you are part of that miracle of human invention. So get to work. Get on with IT, no matter how difficult IT is. Every single gesture, every single stumble, every single uninspired-feeling hour, is worth IT. Richard Bausch ~ Kathy Fish

There's three things: there's masculinity, there's intelligence, there's sensitivity. You've got to bring those three things to a leading man's role: masculinity, sensitivity, intelligence. In some people, there's a little too much in the mix of one or the other. ~ Alec Baldwin

If you ask me if I think I will be sober in 24 hours time I can say yes, but in two years I can't tell you. I could be dead. ~ Daniel Baldwin

If somebody wants to book Alec Baldwin on one of our shows, and he wants to come on and talk to our people and say what he wants, I don't care. We would question him on his choice of words. ~ Roger Ailes

Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he, too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be invested with coherence and looked upon with charity. This was perhaps the last thing humans could give each other and it was what they demanded, after all, of the Lord. ~ James Baldwin

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. ~ James Baldwin

I'm always looking, as an actor, for activities. I think it's far more interesting to watch what people do than what they say. You always want to watch behavior, because the dialogue as written by our illustrious leaders is great. Eminently playable. ~ Adam Baldwin

The one thing that disturbs me about Alec is that people don't realize that he's really funny. ~ Daniel Baldwin

One of the reasons ... I think that our youth is so badly educated
and it is inconceivably badly educated
is because education demands a certain daring, a certain independence of mind. You have to teach some people to think; and in order to teach some people to think, you have to teach them to think about everything. There mustn't be something they cannot think about. If there is one thing they cannot think about, very shortly they can't think about anything. ~ James Baldwin

There exists among the intolerable degraded, the perverse and powerful desire to force into the arena of the actual those fantastic crimes of which they have been accused, achieving their vengeance and their own destruction through making the nightmare real. ~ James A. Baldwin

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process ~ James Baldwin

The people did not go away, of course; once a people arise, they never go away (a fact which should be included in the Marine handbook). ~ James Baldwin

I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues. By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride. ~ James Baldwin

At the end of the spectrum when you get to that 12th step, when you have that spiritual awakening we make ourselves available to help other people. ~ Daniel Baldwin

In the first place, Descartes stands for the most explicit and uncompromising dualism between mind and matter. ~ James Mark Baldwin

The distance between oneself - the audience - and a screen performer is an
absolute: a paradoxical absolute, masquerading as intimacy. ~ James Baldwin

To be in good company is to be alone and be in good company. ~ C. Dale Baldwin