Top 163 Quotes & Sayings by James McBride

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.

People call him a terrorist, but you can use language to do many things and say many things about people, but John Brown was a hero.

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.

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.

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 put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.

Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

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.

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.

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 kind to the living.

You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.

I don't want to read a book that's depressing.

James Brown's music still sounds as fresh and as good and as new as it did when he first created it.

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.

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.

I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.

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.

You can play Mozart all you want and pretend that it gives you class, but what is class, you know? Class is a bus driver on the M103 who gets off the bus to help somebody on board even though he's tired, he's exhausted, and he's two months behind on his mortgage. That's real class.

Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.

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

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

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.

John Brown was clearly flawed in real life. He did some terrible things, but he did some things none of us would have had the heart to do. His moral leanings were unquestionably admirable.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

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

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.

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.

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.

My wife and kids like the quiet and the countryside - I still find that kind of quiet hard to listen to.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

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.

My family is my career.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

I don't live for my work. My life is my life. That's more important, and I think that helps my work.

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.

People process pain differently. My family, we were pretty humorous about things that went on.

Writing teaches writing.

I read more history books than anything else.

Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.

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.

You can't live for literature. You can't live for the job.

Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.

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

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.

I'm proud of 'Miracle at St. Anna' and I loved it; there's no question in my mind it's as good as any movie that came out in 2007.

I can't be a creative person if I'm a celebrity.

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 black church will accept anybody.

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.

I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.

I'd like to do something involving jazz. But books are how I earn my living, and I'd like to stay with the horse I rode in on.

I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.

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

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

If you meet your heroes, you're always going to be disappointed. Frederick Douglass was a great man, but would I want my daughter to marry him? Probably not. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's a great man.

Most of my work is done when everyone else is asleep.

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 band is not a democracy: It's show business.