A Quote by James McBride

I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history. — © James McBride
I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history.
I like human stories. I like stories about situations we can relate to. I like movies like 'Ordinary People' or 'Terms of Endearment.' Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, boyfriends, girlfriends. The stories to me that are worth telling are almost simple ones, but very relatable.
I don't know how to have a normal relationship because I try to act normal and love from a normal place and live a normal life, but there is sort of an abnormal magnifying glass, like telescope lens, on everything that happens.
ACT psychology is a psychology of the normal. A lot of the psychologies that are out there are built on the psychology of the abnormal. We have all these syndromal boxes that we can put people in and so forth. The actual evidence on syndromes is not very good. There's no specific biological marker for any of the things that you see talked about in the media. Even things like schizophrenia - there's no specific and sensitive biological markers for these things. There may be some abnormal processes involved, but vastly more of human suffering comes from normal processes that run away from us.
The crazy thing about me, man, I feel like I'm a normal guy. But, maybe I'm a little abnormal when it comes to talent or something.
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
I have been putting words like 'abnormal' and 'deviant' in quotes because those categorizations are under fire now, the boundary between normal and abnormal as questionable now as are all the other boundaries that once defined social reality.
Depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not cured by medication. Depression may not even be an illness at all. Often, it can be a normal reaction to abnormal situations. Poverty, unemployment, and the loss of loved ones can make people depressed, and these social and situational causes of depression cannot be changed by drugs.
I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal.
Every single word you have spoken is sharp, sarcastic and twisted. When I thought you were abnormal you suddenly turned out to be normal. When I thought you were normal you turned out to be abnormal.
With the Fall all became abnormal. It is not just that the individual is separated from God by his true moral guilt, but each of us is not what God made us to be. Beyond each of us as individuals, human relationships are not what God meant them to be. And beyond that, nature is abnormal - the whole cause-and-effect significant history is now abnormal. To say it another way: there is much in history now which should not be.
I always say I'm one of the most normal abnormal people you'll ever meet. I get embarrassed about how many medals I've won, and I get angry when people presume that because you're gay you've got to wear pink and stilettos and camp it up, or that if you're disabled you should act like a victim and not have a life.
Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.
For me, the best journalism is usually the best storytelling, and the best stories are those of real people. Sometimes those real people are people in positions of great prominence or power or adverse situations, and sometimes it's just normal folks who help illuminate a situation, a place, a culture. And for me, that's always been the best way of telling a story.
I am very abnormal... But it wasn't very long ago that I wasn't so abnormal. I was very normal and headed for a lifetime of paying medical bills as proof of my normalcy.
The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.
The more we as a society make women's sex lives seem like a secret, the more hostile that becomes. Because when you get into that cycle of thinking, no matter what you're doing, you feel shameful about it, because there's no way to talk about it. I think that through talking about it and sharing stories you realize the things you may have felt shameful about are totally normal and totally OK. Everyone's normal in their own way. You can only come to that realization if you're having these conversations, and learning what normal is for other people.
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