Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

— James A. Baldwin

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and now we cannot live within.

— James A. Baldwin

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

— James A. Baldwin

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

— James A. Baldwin

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

— James A. Baldwin

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.

— James A. Baldwin

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

— James A. 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 A. Baldwin

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

— James A. Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

— James A. Baldwin