James Baldwin quotes about love

Love him, love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

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.

But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up.

You are the one who keeps talking about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want.

If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.

Giovanni looked at me. And this look made me feel that no one in my life had ever looked at me directly before.

I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry.

It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.

I was glad. I was utterly, hopelessly, horribly glad. I knew I could do nothing whatever to stop the ferocious excitement which had burst in me like a storm.

You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me but I know that you have never told me the truth—why?

It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.

He held my face between his hands and I suppose such tenderness has scarcely ever produced such terror as I then felt.

Even at my most candid, even when I tried hardest to give myself to him as he gave himself to me, I was holding something back.

The need to act was like a fever in me, the only act possible was the act of love.

And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder.

I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day.

Giovanni knew that I was going to leave him but he did not dare accuse me for fear of being corroborated. I did not dare tell him.

Ah, yes, and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody, somewhere, will always be singing.

I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch—I hoped to drive out fire with fire.

It’s funny, I’ve never felt anyplace was home before.