“Sometimes I wish I had a terrible childhood, so that at least I'd have an excuse.”
“I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.”
Source: An Object Of Beauty
“Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.”
Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
The Straits Times (Singapore) (2001); on the colour of her eyes.
From Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon (1964). Baldwin's text for the volume can be found " here https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cibs".
Context: One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
“But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what's important in life.”
Source: I've Got Your Number
“I sometimes think that ‘friend’ is just a word I use for all the people I haven't murdered yet.”
Source: Short fiction, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane (2014), p. 258
