James McBride Quotes
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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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I don't like living around too many fancy-pantsy folks. That ain't my thing. I'm not into phony people.
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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'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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Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.
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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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People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.
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You can play Mozart all you want and pretend that it gives you class, but what is class, you know? Class is a bus driver on the M103 who gets off the bus to help somebody on board even though he's tired, he's exhausted, and he's two months behind on his mortgage. That's real class.
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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.
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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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We don't know who John Brown was, and in many ways, his work shaped where we are today. He was a Pennsylvanian. He was the prototypical Yankee who fought back and suffered in doing so.
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I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.
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When you glorify violence, then it comes back to bite you.
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There is a lot wrong with the church.
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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.
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Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.
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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.
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You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.
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If I grew up in a truly color-blind society, I would not be a black American.
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I wasn't a guy built to write about entertainment.
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Anyone can write your own life story.
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I thank God I was a reporter before I became a writer.
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You have to be able to toss the thing out. You can't fall in love with your characters, and you have to know when to fight - and when to quit.
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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.