James McBride Quotes
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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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Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.
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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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I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.
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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'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 just love music, and I love what music does for people.
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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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We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.
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I read more history books than anything else.
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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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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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If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
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A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.
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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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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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Everybody knew James Brown. Every musician dreamed of being in his band.
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The black church will accept anybody.
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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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When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.
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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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Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.