Quotes from James McBride

Ain't no worse thing in the world than fronting up against one of those, for a man with a cause, right or wrong, has got plenty to prove, and will make you suck sorrow if you get in the way of 'em wrongly.

Nobody asked the Negro what he thunk about the whole business, by the way, nor the Indian, when I think of it, for neither of their thoughts didn't count, even through most of the squabbling was about them on the outside, for at bottom the whole business was about land and money, something nobody who was squabbling seemed to ever get enough of.

Son, you looks like a character witness for a nightmare. You ugly enough to have your face capped." "We can't all be pretty," he grumbled. "Well, you ain't no gemstone, son. You got a face for swim trunk ads." "I'm seventy-one, Sister Paul. I'm a spring chicken compared to you. I don't see no mens doing backflips at the door over you. At least I ain't got enough wrinkles in my face to hold ten days of rain.

felt her heart pirouette toward her feet.

Wilmington, Del. (AP) June 14, 1966—A fire that destroyed the city's oldest Negro church has led to the discovery of a wild slave narrative that highlights a little-known era of American history. The First United

I wouldn't throw her outta bed for eating crackers. She was all class.

Friendship was trouble in business.

I come to enjoy them talks, for even though I'd gotten used to living a lie—being a girl—it come to me this way: Being a Negro's a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don't matter. You just a Negro to the world.

She does her hair in an Afro like Cicely Tyson, that famous actress I seen on TV once, or Angela Davis, who I don't know exactly who she is but they say she's got guts and ain't scared of white people.

White folks got insane after the Old Man done his bit, they went on a rampage and attacked coloreds for miles. They was scared outta their minds. I reckon in some fashion, they ain't been the same since.

A body can't prosper if a person don't know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That's worse than being anything in the world on the outside.

A bird who flies is special. You would never trap a bird who flies (218).

The Old Man was a lunatic, but he was a good, kind lunatic, and he couldn't no more be a sane man in his transactions with his fellow white man than you and I can bark like a dog, for he didn't speak their language. He was a Bible man. A God man. Crazy as a bedbug. Pure to the truth, which will drive any man off his rocker. But at least he knowed he was crazy. At least he knowed who he was. That's more than I could say for myself.

The bands were horrible outfits that sounded like owls hooting. Moshe watched in puzzlement as these Americans danced with clumsy satisfaction at the moans and groans of these boneless, noise-producing junk mongers, their boring humpty-dumpty sounds landing on the dance floor with all the power of empty peanut shells tossed in the air.

My brothers and sisters were my best friends, but when it came to food, they were my enemies.

that Old Man kept writing letters and squawking and hollering 'bout slavery, sounding off like the devil to every newspaper in America that would listen, and they was listening, for them insurrections scared the devil out the white man. It set the table for the war that was to come, is what it did, for nothing scared the South more than the idea of niggers running 'round with guns and wanting to be free.

To the very end, Mommy is a flying compilation of competing interests and conflicts, a black woman in white skin, with black children and a white woman's physical problem.

Instead, she threw her head back and laughed, displaying a mouth full of gums and one sole yellow tooth, which stood out like a clump of butter on a plate.

Listen, don't meet your heroes. If you meet your heroes, you're always going to be disappointed.

Nothing in the world is normal," he said. "I can't understand why you'd even hope for that." His comment sent the anger hissing out of her like a balloon, and her features softened. She eyed him with curiosity, then wiped the edge of her eye with the back of her hand and shifted her weight.

To not take sides was to take sides.

was, after all, like most men: a moron.

There is an eternity behind and an eternity before, Onion. That little speck at the center, however long, is life. And that is but comparatively a minute, he said. I has done what the Lord has asked me to do in the little time I had. That was my purpose. To hive the colored.

B]ut you remind me of things I can't think about no more. I'm in the last October of life looking for a few more Aprils. I don't want to remember no more.