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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.
James McBride -
When the great jazz and blues clubs closed - joints where the cash register rang loudly and there wasn't ESPN on TV over the bandstand, and people smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and hollered 'Play on!' - When those places closed, I was pretty much done.
James McBride
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Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.
James McBride -
My wife and kids like the quiet and the countryside - I still find that kind of quiet hard to listen to.
James McBride -
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.
James McBride -
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.
James McBride -
I don't come from Lake Wobegon, and that world is not mine. It's not that funny to me. It's funny to other people, and I'm not judging it, but the world that I come from is not considered funny by other people as well. There's so much pain in it.
James McBride -
I thank God I was a reporter before I became a writer.
James McBride
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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.
James McBride -
I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.
James McBride -
If I grew up in a truly color-blind society, I would not be a black American.
James McBride -
I was in a special class in high school for truants. They made us stay together all day. Once a week, they would send us to a guidance counselor. He would sit me in his office and he would try to talk to me.
James McBride -
If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
James McBride -
I wasn't a guy built to write about entertainment.
James McBride
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There is a lot wrong with the church.
James McBride -
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
James McBride -
I don't do any art to please any people.
James McBride -
It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.
James McBride -
When you glorify violence, then it comes back to bite you.
James McBride -
If you meet your heroes, you're always going to be disappointed. Frederick Douglass was a great man, but would I want my daughter to marry him? Probably not. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's a great man.
James McBride
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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.
James McBride -
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.
James McBride -
I don't like a bunch of writers sitting around, puffing smoke, they like this book, he wrote this - tell me a dirty joke, you know. It's just not my style, I've never been that kind of person.
James McBride -
I write stories that are already in the air, and I think it's important to have the correct listening device to tune in to that frequency.
James McBride