James Baldwin Quotes

We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey...

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.

And it doesn't seem to matter, and it doesn't seem right,
'Cause the will has brought no fortune, still I cry alone at night,
Don't you judge of my composure, 'cause I'm bothered every day,
And she didn't leave a letter, she just up and ran away.

We are never ever ever... getting back together.
We are never ever ever... getting back together.
You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me.
But we are never ever ever ever... getting back together.
Like, ever.

And you stood there in front of me just
Close enough to touch,
Close enough to hope you couldn't see
What I was thinking of.Drop everything now,
Meet me in the pouring rain.
Kiss me on the sidewalk,
Take away the pain.
'Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile.

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.

I have never thought there was much to be said in favor of dragging on long after all one's friends were dead.

Hey! Hey, you! Fleeing away, eh? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Wanna drag it to the last scene? Playing the tricks to have a bigger role, no?

I don't wanna lose your face
And I don't wanna wake up one day
and not remember what time erased.
I don't wanna turn around
'Cause I'm not scared of what love gave me and took away.
And I don't wanna lose your face.

Li Yi-an was the greatest poetess of China. Once her husband asked one of his friends to pick out the best lines that he liked from a number of his poems, having, however, concealed in them some pieces by his wife. The friend picked out, to his dismay, only lines from her pen.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

I hope you will find another one who is both beautiful and good to take my place and serve our parents and bring up my children, and then I shall die content.

I touch God in my song
as the hill touched the far-away sea
with its waterfall.

It was his belief that a witty answer turneth away wrath and that the oil of reason should always be poured on troubled waters.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Pakistan, its namaaz-raising hands dipped in the blood of Hindus and Sikhs, began as an Islamic terrorist State and continues to live up to its foundational values. Take it from Balasaheb and me: nothing will emerge from the latest "hand of friendship." Unless, of course, it is Kargil II.