Shelby Jay

“Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that growing just means learning more and more about anguish. That poison becomes your diet—you drink a little of it every day. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t stop seeing it—that’s the trouble. And it can, it can”—she passed her hand wearily over her brow again—“drive you mad.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“He thought, You bastard, you motherfucking bastard. Ain’t I your baby, too? He began to cry. Something in Rufus which could not break shook him like a rag doll and splashed salt water all over his face and filled his throat and his nostrils with anguish. He knew the pain would never stop. He could never go down into the city again. He dropped his head as though someone had struck him and looked down at the water. It was cold and the water would be cold. He was black and the water was black.”
― 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