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Book: If Beale Street Could Talk
Quotes of Book: If Beale Street Could Talk
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  1. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    ...they ain't never met nobody they didn't lie to and steal from.
    book-quoteracism

  2. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    It's funny about people. Just before something happens, you almost know what it is. You do know what it is, I believe. You just haven't had the time-and now you won't have the time-to say it to yourself.
    book-quote

  3. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    Maybe it's because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you. Maybe you get scared and numb, because you don't know if you can depend on people for anything, anymore.
    book-quotetrouble

  4. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    And: the only way anything ever gets done is when you make up your mind to do it.
    book-quote

  5. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    People love different people in different ways.
    book-quotepeoplerelationship

  6. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    He is not here for anything he has done. He has always known that, but now he knows it with a difference. At meals, in the showers, up and down the stairs, in the evening, just before everyone is locked in again, he looks at the others, he listens: what have they done? Not much. To do much is to have the power to place these people where they are, and keep them where they are. These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned. To do much is to have the power and the necessity to dictate to the damned.
    book-quote

  7. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    ...the righteous must be able to locate the damned.
    book-quote

  8. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    These captive men are the hidden price for a hiden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned.
    book-quote

  9. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    There are tears on his face, his face or mine, I don't know. I kiss him where our tears fall. I start to say something. He puts one finger on my lips. He smiles his little smile.
    book-quote

  10. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    The mind is like an object that picks up dust. The object doesn't know, any more than the mind does, why what clings to it clings.
    book-quotememorymindmemories

  11. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way that women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key to her deepest distress.
    book-quote

  12. James Baldwin _ If Beale Street Could Talk

    But I know about suffering; if that helps. I know that it ends. I ain't going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. Sometimes it ends for the worse. You can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can't ever suffer again: and that's worse.
    book-quote
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