James McBride Quotes
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Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.
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My father died in 1957, just before I was born. My mother went to her Jewish aunt, who slammed the door in her face.
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When we're talking about slavery... we're really talking about the web of relationships that exists between whites and blacks from 1619 to 1865 to now.
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I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.
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I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.
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You make your own luck by working hard, you know?
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My main problem with fiction is that once my characters get moving, you just have to follow them along and get out of the way of the story, but sometimes they pull me in too many directions, and I need to focus.
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I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.
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The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
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I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.
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The James Brown story is not about James Brown. It's about who's getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more.
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Atticus Finch is, you know, he was just his whole - the business of his modesty and his ability to see tomorrow and to try to buttress his knowledge of what was coming for his kids was something that I'll never - as a father I'm not able to do.
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John Brown was clearly flawed in real life. He did some terrible things, but he did some things none of us would have had the heart to do. His moral leanings were unquestionably admirable.
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People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.
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It would be nice if we redefined what we meant by 'war story.' If you're making $15,000 a year living in a certain area of Portland, trying to make it with three kids and no husband, that's a kind of war.
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If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
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A lot of mixed-race stories are these navel-gazing, horrible accounts of mulatto tragedy.
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The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.
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Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.
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Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
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We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.
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Historians will tell you that they deal with fact and empirical evidence. But that doesn't really help me understand a person.
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When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.
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All of us want to be Superman when we grow up, fighting for truth and justice. That's part of what drives me as a writer.