QUOTES by James McBride
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I'm not one of those deeper, ethereal writers. I'm just trying to get it done.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
Historians will tell you that they deal with fact and empirical evidence. But that doesn't really help me understand a person.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.
Quote by -James McBride
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?
Quote by -James McBride
When I was younger, I was ambitious. Now I'm not ambitious anymore. I just want to be happy. Does that make sense?
Quote by -James McBride
The whole notion of owning a person is so ludicrous, there's plenty of room to make fun.
Quote by -James McBride
I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
Quote by -James McBride
Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.
Quote by -James McBride
I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.
Quote by -James McBride
Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
Spike Lee listens a lot. He's one of the quietest creative people I've ever met.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
I don't live for my work. My life is my life. That's more important, and I think that helps my work.
Quote by -James McBride
Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.
Quote by -James McBride
I grew up in a house with a lot of kids, brothers and sisters. So I don't mind a lot of talking, yelling, playing. I can tune most of that out.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
My main problem with fiction is that once my characters get moving, you just have to follow them along and get out of the way of the story, but sometimes they pull me in too many directions, and I need to focus.
Quote by -James McBride
If you can whistle the melody, then the song will stick. But if you need a bunch of machines to make it sound good, you're probably not writing anything that's going to last a long time.
Quote by -James McBride
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.
Quote by -James McBride
James Brown's music still sounds as fresh and as good and as new as it did when he first created it.
Quote by -James McBride
The hard part about writing about a guy like John Brown is that he was so serious, and his cause was so serious, that most of what's been written about him is really serious and, in my opinion, a little bit boring.
Quote by -James McBride
When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.
Quote by -James McBride