Letter from a region in my mind Quotes

“and I began, fatally, with Dostoevsky”
― James Baldwin, Letter from a region in my mind

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”
― James Baldwin, Letter from a region in my mind

“(p.85) "I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than color?"

(p.86) "I certainly had no evidence to give them that would outweigh Elijah's authority or the evidence of their own lives or the reality of the streets outside. Yes, I knew two or three people, white, whom I would trust with my life, and I knew a few others, white, who were struggling as hard as they knew how, and with great effort and sweat and risk, to make the world more human. But how could I say this? One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief. All my evidence would be thrown out of court as irrelevant to the main body of the case, for I could only cite exceptions.”
― James Baldwin, Letter from a region in my mind