James Baldwin

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

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in...”

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

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

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.”

“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”