Quotes from James McBride

We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.

My father died in 1957, just before I was born. My mother went to her Jewish aunt, who slammed the door in her face.

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.

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.

Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.

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.

When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.

The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.

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 go through periods listening to specific types of music. Because I'm a musician, listening to music is... it's a bit like work for me. A little bit.

A typewriter forces you to keep going, to march forward.

I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.

The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.

Spike Lee listens a lot. He's one of the quietest creative people I've ever met.

I split my time between a small town in New Jersey and New York City.

Everybody knew James Brown. Every musician dreamed of being in his band.

James Brown was the Monday-to-Friday guy. He was the hardest man in show business. He was like your dad and your uncle: He showed up, and he hit hard.

I understand it's great to read a great book, but it's better to live your life. It just helps me. It's uncomfortable at times, but you have to live outside the circle.

The James Brown story is not about James Brown. It's about who's getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more.

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.

I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over. It's all in God's hands.

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.

Wonderful, he said. Tell me. Which books in the Bible do you favor? Oh, I favors 'em all, Pa said. But I mostly like Hezekiel, Ahab, Trotter, and Pontiff the Emperor. The Old Man frowned. I don't recollect I have read those, he said.