Quotes from If Beale Street Could Talk

James Baldwin ·  197 pages

Rating: (5K votes)


“Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“I was in his hands, he called me by the thunder at my ear. I was in his hands: I was being changed; all that I could do was cling to him. I did not realize, until I realized it, that I was also kissing him, that everything was breaking and changing and turning in me and moving toward him.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now--people love different people in different ways--but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look strong, or just come on strong, people react to you in another way, and, since you don't see what they see, this can be very painful. I think that's why Sis was always in front of that damn mirror all the time, when we were kids. She was saying, 'I don't care. I got me.' Of course, this only made her come on stronger than ever, which was the last effect she desired: but that's the way we are and that's how we can sometimes get so fucked up. Anyway, she's past all that. She knows who she is, or, at least, she knows who she damn well isn't.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk



“Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don't know if I can explain this. You go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven't seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you'd have to think awhile before you could answer. But at the same time, and even on the self-same day-- and this is what is hard to explain--you see people like you never saw them before.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key to her deepest distress. She must watch and guide, but he must lead, and he will always appear to be giving far more of his real attention to his comrades than he is giving to her. But that noisy, outward openness of men with each other enables them to deal with the silence and secrecy of women, that silence and secrecy which contains the truth of a man, and releases it. I suppose that the root of the resentment—a resentment which hides a bottomless terror—has to do with the fact that a woman is tremendously controlled by what the man’s imagination makes of her—literally, hour by hour, day by day; so she becomes a woman. But a man exists in his own imagination, and can never be at the mercy of a woman’s.—Anyway, in this fucked up time and place, the whole thing becomes ridiculous when you realize that women are supposed to be more imaginative than men. This is an idea dreamed up by men, and it proves exactly the contrary. The truth is that dealing with the reality of men leaves a woman very little time, or need, for imagination. And you can get very fucked up, here, once you take seriously the notion that a man who is not afraid to trust his imagination (which is all that men have ever trusted) if effeminate. It says a lot about this country, because, of course, if all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination. Or women, for that matter: or men.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church. Fonny was doing: time. In six months time, our baby would be here. Somewhere, in time, Fonny and I had met: somewhere, in time, we had loved; somewhere, no longer in time, but, now, totally, at time’s mercy, we loved.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“Don’t think I don’t know you love me. You believe we going to make it?”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk



“One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“We live in a nation of pigs and murderers.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“Sanırım 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 Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“I don't believe there's a white man in this country, baby, who can get his dick hard, without he hear some nigger moan.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“We held each other so close that we might indeed have been one body.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk



“Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody – if it is, God's days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve– and do serve, in ways that they don't know– has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man. Or: if you were.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“...love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don't panic now.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“There are tears on his face, his face or mine, I don't know. I kiss him where our tears fall. I start to say something. He puts one finger on my lips. He smiles his little smile.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“He grins again, and everything inside me moves. Oh, love. Love.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“These captive men are the hidden price for a hiden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk



“...the righteous must be able to locate the damned.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“The baby was restless, and I was scared. It was almost time. I was so tired, I almost wanted to die. For a long time, because he was in solitary, I had not been able to see Fonny. I had seen him on this day. He was so skinny; he was so bruised: I almost cried out. To whom, where? I saw this question in Fonny's enormous, slanted black eyes–– eyes that burned, now, like the eyes of a prophet. Yet, when he grinned, I saw, all over again, my lover, as though for the first time.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“From my chair, I looked out my window, over these dreadful streets.

The baby asked,
'Is there not one righteous among them?”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“...they ain't never met nobody they didn't lie to and steal from.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk


“And he suddenly takes the bag of tomatoes and smashes them against the nearest wall. Thank God the wall is blank, thank God it is now beginning to be dark. Thank God tomatoes spatter but do not ring.”
― James Baldwin, quote from If Beale Street Could Talk



About the author

James Baldwin
Born place: in Harlem, New York, The United States
Born date August 2, 1924
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Մարդ-բանտապահն ավելի քիչ գիտակցություն ուներ, քան այն կողպեքը, որով նա փակում է դուռը, և ավելի կարծր էր, քան այն երկաթը, որով նա ամրացնում էր դռները”
― Alexandre Dumas, quote from The Black Tulip


“Believe me, I want you to have a good time,' he said gently, 'but people who have that primarily in mind rarely accomplish it.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit


“Grief takes time. Give yourself some. “Sages invest themselves in hurt and grieving” (Eccles. 7:4 MSG ). Lament may be a foreign verb in our world but not in Scripture’s. Seventy percent of the psalms are poems of sorrow. Why, the Old Testament includes a book of lamentations. The son of David wrote, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us” (Eccles. 7:3 NLT ). We spelunk life’s deepest issues in the cave of sorrow. Why am I here? Where am I headed? We spelunk life’s deepest issues in the cave of sorrow. Why am I here? Where am I headed? Cemetery strolls stir hard yet vital questions. David indulged the full force of his remorse: “I am worn out from sobbing. Every night tears drench my bed; my pillow is wet from weeping” (Ps. 6:6 NLT ). And then later: “I am dying from grief; my years are shortened by sadness. Misery has drained my strength; I am wasting away from within” (Ps. 31:10 NLT ).”
― Max Lucado, quote from Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible


“Being a good person is more than just not being a bad person.”
― quote from Monster


“That as people age, accumulate more and more private experiences, their sense of history tightens, narrows, becomes more personal? So that to the extent that they remember events of social importance, they remember only for example 'where they were' when such-and-such occurred. Et cetera et cetera. Objective events and data become naturally more and more subjectively colored.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from The Broom of the System


Interesting books

The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
(3.1K)
The Elements of Eloq...
by Mark Forsyth
The Medium
(3.7K)
The Medium
by C.J. Archer
One Pink Line
(5.8K)
One Pink Line
by Dina Silver
Bloom
(220)
Bloom
by Marilyn Grey
The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want
(5.9K)
The How of Happiness...
by Sonja Lyubomirsky
Fears of Darkness
(30)
Fears of Darkness
by J.M. Northup

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.