James McBride Quotes
It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.
Quotes to Explore
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We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
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Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.
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Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?
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With ladder matches, you can't expect anything other than craziness.
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I got into politics because I was tired of complaining.
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I have fabulous children.
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Constant togetherness is fine - but only for Siamese twins.
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I don't know how it started but someone must have noticed I was always chewing tobacco or smoking a pipe.
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I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.
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The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
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The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
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It was hard at school because, growing up, some people wanted to be friends with me just because they wanted to get to my dad and say that they had met him and had gone to our house. I didn't understand it at the time, but the older I got and the more aware of it I became, it started becoming hard.
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There are epic downsides to living a somewhat public life. The upshot of that is there's nothing to hide. It's a relief in a way. There's nothing about me that can't be said.
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The best way to cope with trouble is to stay out of it as much as possible.
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The funny thing is that my husband couldn't be sweeter. He looks like this bad boy. He's got tattoos and earrings and a mohawk, but when you talk to him and he's around you, he's such a gentleman. He holds doors for ladies. He pulls out chairs. He cooks. He cleans.
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Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
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I am an artist who works with Lego.
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My music is bejewelled, it's colourful, it's romantic, it shines.
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Better rooms better furniture, better objects d'art can only be created for a society interested in living - not existing.
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We spend our time responding rationally to a world which we understand and recognize, but which no longer exists.
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Leaving your country at a tender age really rearranges the way you perceive the world. So I feel marginally attached to many places rather than deeply attached to any one place.
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I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that's not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.
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I knew Secrets and Lies was a great film, but I didn't expect it to get the attention it did because none of his other films had and I thought they were just as good.
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It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.
