Quotes from James McBride

And when James asked what color God was, she said, God is the color of water.

There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, and the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rules and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. My life won't be lived that way, and neither, I hope, will my children's.

The greatest gift that anyone can give anyone is LIFE. And the greatest sin a person can do is to take away that life. NEXT to that, all rules and religions in the worldare secondary, mere words and beliefs that people CHOOSE to believe and KILL and HATE by.

There ain't no time for foolishness now. You in it now. You got to stay in it.

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.

since I was a little boy, she had always wanted me to go. She was always sending me off on a bus someplace, to elementary school, to camp, to relatives in Kentucky, to college. She pushed me away from her just as she'd pushed my elder siblings away when we lived in New York, literally shoving them out the front door when they left for college.

He's a drunk. One of those guys who dies at twenty and is buried at eighty.

This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world

You ain't got to worry about your skin." "I do worries about my skin. It covers my body.

I don't like living around too many fancy-pantsy folks. That ain't my thing. I'm not into phony people.

Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.

All of us want to be Superman when we grow up, fighting for truth and justice. That's part of what drives me as a writer.

The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.

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."

God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you.

Put yourself in God's hands and you can't go wrong.

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.

It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.

I don't do any art to please any people.

The whole notion of owning a person is so ludicrous, there's plenty of room to make fun.

I think what makes his story unique from others is there is not really one piece of American pop music you hear today that does not have some James Brown in it.

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.

John Brown was the abolitionist to end all abolitionists. People thought he was crazy. He was like John Coltrane playing free jazz, exhausting all possibilities in his approach to harmony and improvisation.