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James Baldwin quotes

316 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as James Baldwin wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around. Page 1 of 13.

Illustrated portrait of James Baldwin
Pen-and-ink illustration of a portable typewriter and manuscripts beside a Paris window

How these quotes were checked

How we decide whether a quote is genuine

James Baldwin is quoted more often than he is read, and the internet has put sentences in his mouth that he never wrote. A line enters this collection only when its wording can be checked against one of his books, a published essay, or a recorded interview, and the work it comes from is named beside it.

Where a famous sentence turns out to belong to somebody else, or to have been smoothed on its way around the internet, it is listed below with what the printed record actually says.

James Baldwin laughing in profile, wearing a pale jacket and scarf, photographed outdoors in Hyde Park, London, in 1969
James Baldwin in Hyde Park, London, in 1969, photographed by Allan Warren. Allan Warren, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Two famous James Baldwin quotes, fact-checked

A sentence linked to James Baldwin may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.

Misattributed

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

These are the words of the novelist Robert Jones Jr., who posted them on 18 August 2015 under the handle Son of Baldwin — a name he took in tribute to Baldwin, which is how the sentence came to be credited to Baldwin himself. Jones has said publicly that the line is his. It appears in none of Baldwin's books or published essays, and it only began circulating in the second half of the 2010s, nearly thirty years after Baldwin's death.

  • — Did James Baldwin Say ‘We Can Disagree and Still Love Each Other’? — Snopes
Verified

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

This one is genuinely his, from the essay “As Much Truth As One Can Bear,” published in the New York Times Book Review on 14 January 1962. One mark of its travels survives: Baldwin printed a semicolon — “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced” — and the version shared today almost always replaces it with a comma. It is also routinely credited to one of his books, which is where it does not appear.

  • — James Baldwin, James Baldwin, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962) — WIST Quotations (1962)

"As Much Truth As One Can Bear," The New York Times Book Review, 14 January 1962 quotes

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
— James Baldwin, "As Much Truth As One Can Bear," The New York Times Book Review, 14 January 1962

The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984 quotes

I was broke. I got to Paris with forty dollars in my pocket, but I had to get out of New York.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
When I arrived in Paris in 1948 I didn’t know a word of French. I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t want to know anyone.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
My reflexes were tormented by the plight of other people.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
It wasn’t so much a matter of choosing France—it was a matter of getting out of America. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in France but I knew what was going to happen to me in New York.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
If I had stayed there, I would have gone under, like my friend on the George Washington Bridge.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
I went through this period where I was very much alone, and wanted to be.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
Looking for a place to live. Looking for a job. You begin to doubt your judgment, you begin to doubt everything. You become imprecise. And that’s when you’re beginning to go under.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
The whole society has decided to make you nothing. And they don’t even know they’re doing it.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
I’ve been compelled in some ways by describing my circumstances to learn to live with them. It’s not the same thing as accepting them.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
Given the conditions in this country to be a black writer was impossible.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
I knew what it meant to be white and I knew what it meant to be a nigger, and I knew what was going to happen to me. My luck was running out. I was going to go to jail, I was going to kill somebody or be killed.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
I’d been a preacher for three years, from age fourteen to seventeen. Those were three years which probably turned me to writing.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
I would improvise from the texts, like a jazz musician improvises from a theme.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
You have to sense the people you’re talking to. You have to respond to what they hear.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
It was that or nothing, since in my own mind I was the father of my family.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984
On the roads I traveled and the streets I ran, anything could have happened to a boy like me—in New York. Sleeping on rooftops and in the subways.
— James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review, issue 91, Spring 1984

Giovanni's Room quotes

Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both.
— David (narration) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part One, Chapter 2
Love him, love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
— Jacques (dialogue) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part One, Chapter 3
Somebody, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour—and in the oddest places!—for the lack of it.
— Jacques (dialogue) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part One, Chapter 3
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
— Giovanni (dialogue) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part Two, Chapter 3
He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
— David (narration) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part Two, Chapter 2
You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities.
— Giovanni (dialogue) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part Two, Chapter 4
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
— David (narration) · James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956), Part One, Chapter 1

From the books

Every book with a quote collection of its own, each line verified against the text.

Questions about James Baldwin quotes

Did James Baldwin write “We can disagree and still love each other”?

No. The sentence is by the novelist Robert Jones Jr., who published it in August 2015 under the handle Son of Baldwin, a tribute name that is the likely reason it drifted to Baldwin. It is in none of Baldwin's work, and it first circulated decades after his death in 1987.

What is James Baldwin's most famous quote?

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” from his 1962 New York Times Book Review essay “As Much Truth As One Can Bear” — where it is printed with a semicolon rather than the comma the internet gives it. The lines from his books that circulate nearly as widely are gathered above, each credited to the work it comes from.

Where do these James Baldwin quotes come from?

From his own books and published interviews: the novels and the essay collections, and the recorded conversations where he spoke rather than wrote. Every quote above names its work, so a reader can go to the page rather than take the line on trust.

References

References

The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.

  1. 1Did James Baldwin Say ‘We Can Disagree and Still Love Each Other’? — Snopes

    Website
    Snopes
    Used for

    The attribution of the disagree-and-still-love-each-other sentence to Robert Jones Jr.

    View source

  2. 2James Baldwin, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962) — WIST Quotations

    Website
    WIST Quotations, 1962
    Used for

    The 1962 essay that carries the nothing-can-be-changed sentence.

    View source
i
Why these sources are here

Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.

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The James Baldwin profile — the work, the places, the people.

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