'You think,' he persisted, 'that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should… — James Baldwin
'You think,' he persisted, 'that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.'
'Why are they — shameful?' I asked him.
'Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It's like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.'
p. 49Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
I shall never be able to have any more of these boyish, zestful affairs — which are, really, when one thinks about it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly.
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She is smiling and her eyes are kind but now the smile is purely social
p. 62
Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
p. 5
