James McBride Quotes

Quotes about:

• I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

  James McBride

  White, Black, Educate

  37 Copy quote

• God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.

  James McBride

  God, Color, Water

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.39, A&C Black

  46 Copy quote

• You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.

  James McBride

  World, Want, What You Want

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.125, A&C Black

  29 Copy quote

• I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.

  James McBride

  Men, White Man, Understanding

  8 Copy quote

• My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

  James McBride

  Years, America, Parent

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.21, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• Family is the last and greatest discovery. It is our last miracle.

  James McBride

  Family, Discovery, Miracle

  6 Copy quote

• The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.

  James McBride

  Sports, Children, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  10 Copy quote

• It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.

  James McBride

  Gun, Waiting, Southern

  James McBride (2006). “The Color of Water 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.70, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt.

  James McBride

  Kids, Self, Toys

  7 Copy quote

• There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rules and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. My life won't be lived that way, and neither, I hope, will my children's.

  James McBride

  Children, Hate, Believe

  8 Copy quote

• I can write anywhere really. I have a hard time writing when the birds are tweeting and the brooks are running outside. I've tried that several times, for months at a time, trying to write in a quiet, wonderful place where birds are twittering and coffee's brewing. And nothing happens. But if I'm in an old dump like my old apartment and I can't find my fingernail clippers and nothing's working except the old tea maker, that's just great. You always have to find and live in a place that's a little uncomfortable when you're a writer. You need a burr in your side.

  James McBride

  Running, Writing, Hard Times

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.

  James McBride

  Opportunity, African American, Black

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

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

  James McBride

  Writing, Cutting, Fats

  9 Copy quote

• My black friends never asked me how much money I made, or what school my children went to, or anything like that. They just said, "Come as you are."

  James McBride

  Friends, Children, School

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.83, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• ...since I was a little boy, she had always wanted me to go. She was always sending me off on a bus someplace, to elementary school, to camp, to relatives in Kentucky, to college. She pushed me away from her just as she'd pushed my elder siblings away when we lived in New York, literally shoving them out the front door when they left for college.

  James McBride

  New York, Sibling, School

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.146, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• So sweet and precious is family life.

  James McBride

  Sweet, Family Life

  5 Copy quote

• When you walk the significant land, the land speaks to you - even if it's 150 years later. You walk the earth and good things happen. There's always something to be said for going to a spot, even if there's nothing there. That's why you have a brain, your mind moves to other places when you're standing at an important spot.

  James McBride

  Moving, Brain, Mind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a better musician now, and I rarely practice because age has taught me the value of economy. And I think I'm a better writer now because I don't waste as much time, dilly-dallying and sassafrassin' and sloop and sloppin' and frying eggs. When you start writing, half the time you're just saying howdy to the page. My process now is a little more lean and muscular. I don't waste a lot of time. When I had kids, I learned how much time I had before, and how much time you actually need to do something. If you don't have time, you'll just do it and get it done.

  James McBride

  Writing, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• My family is my career.

  James McBride

  Careers, My Family

  5 Copy quote

• Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

  James McBride

  Educate

  James McBride (2012). “The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother”, p.70, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• Testosterone is a sex hormone, and I think it is the most social of hormones. The major social effect of testosterone is to orient us toward issues of sex and power. By the end of puberty testosterone levels in males are 8 to 10 times higher than in females, but decrease with age.

  James McBride

  Sex, Thinking, Issues

  19 Copy quote

• Some things in this world just ain't meant to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear.

  James McBride

  Heart, Remembrance, Promise

  7 Copy quote

• There has to be some mystery in life, because the joy of being a writer and the joy of being a musician is the joy of discovery. I don't want someone discovering for me what I should be discovering on my own. If a person is discovering for me, then they're living for me. It's my responsibility, indeed it's my privilege, to go out and discover the world for myself.

  James McBride

  Responsibility, Joy, Musician

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

  James McBride

  Details, Stories, Journalist

  6 Copy quote

• What humor allows you to do is to let the past go with less pain. It's a healing element. It releases some of the pain from the shotgun wound.

  James McBride

  Pain, Healing, Past

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

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