James McBride Quotes
God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.
I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!
You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.
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.
First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.
The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.
But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That’s what counts.
The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
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.
Sometimes it seemed like the truth was a bandy-legged soul who dashed from one side of the world to the other and I could never find him.
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.
My black friends never asked me how much money I made, or what school my children went to, or anything like that. They just said, "Come as you are."
I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.
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.
But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.
It's a real stumper to sit around and try to think in your own head, but when you go into somebody else's head that takes the foot off the breaks. You can think in someone else's head.
I just read history books. I read nothing but history books. They have so much to give; I wish I'd majored in history in college.
I think a lot of the history we've read up to this point, some of it is just off. It's written with the same prejudice that certain networks have when they report the news of the day.
What humor allows you to do is to let the past go with less pain. It's a healing element. It releases some of the pain from the shotgun wound.
If you don't have humor, you're not going to make it. You're going to be one of those people who walks around with your head about to explode.
We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
It's God's world. He washes you clean. He makes you whole. He puts rain in your garden and sunshine in your heart. "Clarence
Not a week after Annie put her foot in Mrs. Huffmaster's duff, the Captain upped and laid down the date.
