James McBride Quotes
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A lot of mixed-race stories are these navel-gazing, horrible accounts of mulatto tragedy.
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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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When I was coming up, a lot of serious jazz players couldn't stand funk.
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You make your own luck by working hard, you know?
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Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.
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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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Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.
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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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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.
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I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.
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I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
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The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
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I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.
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I split my time between a small town in New Jersey and New York City.
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You can't live for literature. You can't live for the job.
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I go through periods listening to specific types of music. Because I'm a musician, listening to music is... it's a bit like work for me. A little bit.
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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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As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
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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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As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.
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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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The hard part about writing about a guy like John Brown is that he was so serious, and his cause was so serious, that most of what's been written about him is really serious and, in my opinion, a little bit boring.
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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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I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.