James McBride
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.Collection: Humor
You can't live for literature. You can't live for the job.
I don't live for my work. My life is my life. That's more important, and I think that helps my work.
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.
I'm trying to get Americans to see that we're all pretty much the same. I believe it; I was taught God doesn't have a color. I want to better the planet a little bit.
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.
Everybody knew James Brown. Every musician dreamed of being in his band.
I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.
As far as making a living, if plumbing earned more, I'd probably do it. At least you can leave the job at home once the tools are put away. A writer works in his mind 24/7.
We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.
Atticus Finch is, you know, he was just his whole - the business of his modesty and his ability to see tomorrow and to try to buttress his knowledge of what was coming for his kids was something that I'll never - as a father I'm not able to do.
My wife and kids like the quiet and the countryside - I still find that kind of quiet hard to listen to.
The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.
I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history.
I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.
Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.
You make your own luck by working hard, you know?
I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.
Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
A daily dose of Nietzsche goes a long way.
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.
I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.
Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.
I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.
The whole notion of owning a person is so ludicrous, there's plenty of room to make fun.
I thank God I was a reporter before I became a writer.
I wasn't a guy built to write about entertainment.
I just love music, and I love what music does for people.
When I was younger, I was ambitious. Now I'm not ambitious anymore. I just want to be happy. Does that make sense?
My goal is to be able to fill out one of those forms that asks 'Who are you?' and be able to just put 'Human being,' you know?
Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.
A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.
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.
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.
Historians will tell you that they deal with fact and empirical evidence. But that doesn't really help me understand a person.
When we're talking about slavery... we're really talking about the web of relationships that exists between whites and blacks from 1619 to 1865 to now.
I'm not one of those deeper, ethereal writers. I'm just trying to get it done.
The media's image of us is as animals, and we were never that to me. I knew love from black folks.
I don't do any art to please any people.
My mother tried her best to give us a sense of self-esteem.
There is a lot wrong with the church.
When I was coming up, a lot of serious jazz players couldn't stand funk.
A lot of mixed-race stories are these navel-gazing, horrible accounts of mulatto tragedy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.
If I grew up in a truly color-blind society, I would not be a black American.