The Price Of The Ticket might be my favourite of Baldwin’s essays so far. I’ve read almost everything he’s ever written now and have never been disappointed. His gorgeous personality and genius mind makes everything he writes better than almost anything else ever written.

Then, he said, I wondered if I might be in love with you.' I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea. But I was to hurt a great many people by being unable to imagine that anyone could possibly be in love with an ugly boy like me. To be valued is one thing, the recognition of this assessment demanding, essentially, an act of the will. But love is another matter: it is scarcely worth observing what a mockery love makes of the will. Leaving all that alone, however: when he was dead, I realized that I would have done anything whatever to have been able to hold him in this world.