10 Quotes from James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son”

“A force of circumstance is not poverty merely but color. ” (pg.31)
“Whenever we encounter him in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.” (pg. 37)
“Negro life is in fact as debased and impoverished as our theology claims.” (pg. 41)
“It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything one refused to question.”
“To smash something is the ghetto’s chronic need.” (pg.111)
“The alienation causes the Negro to recognize that he is a hybrid.”(pg.123)
“An American Attribute is the inability to believe that time is real” (.pg.135)
“No people come into possession of a culture without paying a heavy price for it.” (pg.140)
” Whenever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the tension of a silence filled with things unutterable.” (pg. 29)
” People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” (pg. 163)