James Baldwin Quotes

Culture follows power.

In Japan, after having lost World War II, the hierarchy that used to exist in the society, from the rich to the poor, has been flattened, especially by the winners, by Americans. As a Japanese artist debuting in America, I really had to bring that kind of theme into the work.

Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.

The gatekeepers don't control the gates, and the powers that be aren't as powerful.

Americans, perhaps more than most people, have pondered the question of who they are and what their country is.

I always had this crisis: where do I come from? I was never an insider, never an outsider; I was always in the middle. But it means I never have borders in my head.

Growing up in the U.S., I'd siloed off my identities. While I was an Indian at home, I was an American at school. I have now embraced both the identities.

I'm not trying to erase my culture or my faith, I'm trying to be the best version of myself, and it's really hard. I don't think I'm right, I don't claim to be correct, I'm just trying to figure it out and figure out a balance.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

I felt very isolated with my identity virtually my entire life, that nobody really got it and that I didn't really have the personal agency to express it.

Unfortunately, I think I drifted so much growing up that I don't have a strong sense of identity. I don't feel at home anywhere, and because of that, I think I'm more of a chameleon.

Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in which misrecognition has haunted all cognition.

The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.

I could always talk about being a Latino and having a Mexican mom and a Honduran dad and being from Honduras. That was always an easy go-to place. But on the other hand, it was a crutch.

You don't realise how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in.

Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.

The question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.

When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.

I'm trying to find out what the hell we - who we are.

I have a hard time isolating what it is in myself that makes me so fascinated with the theme of identity, because I came from a normal upper middle-class family. And yet, as I look back at my books, the uses of power, issues of identity, they have - it's recurrent. It happens again and again.

I don't think there is a distinct change, because in the West I'm not a person who can serve his purpose.

The story of Kal-El is actually a great story about adoption. He is an alien who has embraced his human side. As much as he loves and honours his heritage, and he needed to know where he came from and discover who he was, he has to decide who he is going to be.

We need to define what culture is. Every human being lives within a culture, and culture means "To grow in." It means to literally fall, and this is exactly what I believe is happening all around us right now.

Algeria is what allowed me to accept myself.