James Baldwin

I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.

And she carried him, as the sea will carry a boat: with a slow, rocking and rising and falling motion, barely suggestive of the violence of the deep.

And what did he know about them really, except that they were ashamed of him? They didn’t know that he was real. It seemed that they didn’t, for that matter, know that they were real, but he was insufficiently simple to find this notion comforting.

You said once,’ he said, ‘that you wanted to grow. Isn’t that always frightening? Doesn’t it always hurt?’

It doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time – one is oneself all those people. We are the time.’

advertised the chewing gum which would help one to relax and keep smiling

Entirely alone, and dying of it, he was part of an unprecedented multitude

who were held back from his condition by barriers as perishable as their dwindling cigarettes

They could scarcely bear their knowledge, nor could they have borne the sight of Rufus, but they knew why he was in the streets tonight, why he rode subways all night long, why his stomach growled, why his hair was nappy, his armpits funky, his pants and shoes too thin, and why he did not dare to stop and take a leak

Someone would look at him with horror, then turn back to his business with a long-drawn-out, pitying, Man