He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him. They were all named, more or less, all more or less destined, the pattern he wished them to describe was clear to him. But it did not seem clear to them. He could move them about but they themselves did not move. He put words in their mouths which they uttered sullenly, unconvinced. With the same agony, or greater, with which he attempted to seduce a woman, he was trying to seduce his people: he begged them to surrender up their privacy. And they refused - without, for all their ugly intransigence, showing the faintest desire to leave him. They were waiting for him to find the key, press the nerve, tell the truth.
James BaldwinTags: writing
It is quite impossible to write a worth-while novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse, unhappily, to function in so neat and one-dimensional a fashion.
James BaldwinTags: lgbt-literature
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
James BaldwinSanırım iki insanın hem gülmesi hem sevişmesi, güldükleri için sevişmeleri ve seviştikleri için gülmeleri pek az rastlanır bir durumdur. Sevmek ve gülmek hep aynı yerden gelir de, o noktaya pek çok kişi erişemez.
James BaldwinIt'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 BaldwinI hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.
James BaldwinNo 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 BaldwinShe was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyes off him nor look at him.
James BaldwinIdentity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.
James BaldwinNow, from this night, this coming morning, no matter how many beds I find myself in between now and my final bed, I shall never be able to have any more of those boyish, zestful affairs--which are, really, when one thinks of it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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