James McBride Quotes
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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 think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.
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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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Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.
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I just love music, and I love what music does for people.
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I'm hot on the Jewish book club circuit. How many black authors do you know who can say that?
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I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.
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I read more history books than anything else.
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James Brown's life was really a metaphor for our inability to talk about matters like race and class in America.
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I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.
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I'm proud of 'Miracle at St. Anna' and I loved it; there's no question in my mind it's as good as any movie that came out in 2007.
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The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.
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Everybody knew James Brown. Every musician dreamed of being in his band.
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If you can whistle the melody, then the song will stick. But if you need a bunch of machines to make it sound good, you're probably not writing anything that's going to last a long time.
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We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.
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The black church will accept anybody.
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Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.
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I'd like to do something involving jazz. But books are how I earn my living, and I'd like to stay with the horse I rode in on.
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Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.
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A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.
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I grew up in a house with a lot of kids, brothers and sisters. So I don't mind a lot of talking, yelling, playing. I can tune most of that out.
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I'm trying to get Americans to see that we're all pretty much the same. I believe it; I was taught God doesn't have a color. I want to better the planet a little bit.
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The media's image of us is as animals, and we were never that to me. I knew love from black folks.
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I don't like living around too many fancy-pantsy folks. That ain't my thing. I'm not into phony people.