James Baldwin

"In any event, the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems. These have been dealt with, when they have been dealt with at all, out of necessity—and in political terms, anyway, necessity means concessions made in order to stay on top."

"I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter."

"Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of 'Success."

"Whose little boy are you?"

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

"I do a lot of rewriting. It’s very painful."

"Sin is the only heritage of the natural man..."