James Baldwin quotes about desire

But it was not the same, something was gone; the astonishment, the power, and the joy were gone, the peace was gone.

Me, I want to escape, je veuz m’evader—this dirty world, this dirty body. I never wish to make love again with anything more than the body.

Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues.

I wish to God I may die if I don’t love you. There ain’t no sky above us if I don’t love you.

It was later to become his proud testimony that he hated his sins—even as he ran toward sin, even as he sinned.

I been thinking how you better commence to tremble when the Lord, He gives you your heart’s desire.

Even a Reverend’s got the right to take off his clothes sometimes and act like a natural man.

She had fallen from that high estate which God had intended for men and women, and she made her fall glorious because it was so complete.

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.

When two people love each other, when they really love each other, everything that happens between them has something of a sacramental air.

And Fonny’s body was a total mystery to me – the body of one’s lover always is, no matter how well one gets to know it: it is the changing envelope which contains the gravest mystery of one’s life.

He was the most beautiful person I had seen in all my life.

It’s astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body – the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too. You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.

We had not seen the moment. But the moment had seen us, from a long ways off – sat there, waiting for us – utterly free, the moment, playing cards, hurling thunderbolts, cracking spines, tremendously waiting for us, dawdling home from school, to keep our appointment.