Giovanni’s Room

by James Baldwin

for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night.

Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.

“You people dumped all this merde on us,” I said, sullenly, “and now you say we’re barbaric because we stink.”

“Tell me,” he said, “what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?”

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.”

“Love him,” said Jacques, with vehemence, “love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

“You play it safe long enough,” he said, in a different tone, “and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”

“Somebody,” said Jacques, “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.”

perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt.

“For a woman,” she said, “I think a man is always a stranger. And there’s something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.”