James McBride Quotes
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I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over. It's all in God's hands.
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James Brown was the Monday-to-Friday guy. He was the hardest man in show business. He was like your dad and your uncle: He showed up, and he hit hard.
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James Brown's music still sounds as fresh and as good and as new as it did when he first created it.
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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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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'm not one of those deeper, ethereal writers. I'm just trying to get it done.
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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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I split my time between a small town in New Jersey and New York City.
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The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
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I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
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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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As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
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I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.
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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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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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You can't live for literature. You can't live for the job.
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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 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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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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I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.
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Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.
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Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.