Shelby Jay

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

“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

“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