Going to Meet the Man: Stories

by James Baldwin

“Don’t worry. I’m all right now and I think I’ll be all right. But I can’t forget—where I’ve been. I don’t mean just the physical place I’ve been, I mean where I’ve been. And what I’ve been.”

“Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe, then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away—you know?—from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters, and all that blood.”