James Baldwin

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

"The future is like heaven, everybody exalts it, but nobody wants to go there now."

"It is only in his music, which Americans are able to give to the world, that the Negro is free."

"One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience."

"Whoever debases others is debasing himself."

"Anger can be power."

"Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?"

"Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is wear it."

"The only reason we are successful is because we have become unafraid."

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

"I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me."

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take."

"I wish to be accountable for my energies and my past."

"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."

"Not a person on the earth lives without knowing something about stories."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"Love is a battle, love is a war; it is the only thing worth waging war over."

"It is hard to be hated, and it is hard to hate, and it is hard to watch people you love be hated."

"People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes swimming back to them, poisoned."

"Time is a very precious thing, and it's something that can never be recaptured."

"Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of historical truth."

"Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition."

"The creation of Blacks is the most extraordinary period in the very long history of the world's persecution."

"There is no way around this: in order for the world to survive, we must become better than we are."

"A person is not nice because he or she is not dangerous."

"One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone walks in and changes everything."

"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."

"You cannot accept the events of your life as a free man unless you accept the reality of your future as well."

"The world is white and we are living in it."