Shelby Jay

“What a great difference there is,' she said, 'between dreaming of something and dealing with it!”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“They knew that no one heard, that bloodless people cannot be made to bleed. So they blew what everyone had heard before, they reassured everyone that nothing terrible was happening, and the people at the tables found it pleasant to shout over this stunning corroboration and the people at the bar, under cover of the noise they could scarcely have lived without, pursued whatever it was they were after.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“Both clung to a fantasy rather than to each other, tried to suck pleasure from the crannies of the mind, rather than surrender the secrets of the body.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“It's very hard to live with that,' said Eric.
'I mean, with the sense that one is never what one seems—never—and yet, what one seems to be is probably, in some sense, almost exactly what one is.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country