James McBride famous quotes

God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.
-- James McBride

#God #Color #Water

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself,
-- James McBride

#World #Want #What You Want

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

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

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

Family is the last and greatest discovery. It is our last miracle.
-- James McBride

#Family #Discovery #Miracle

...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

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

But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.
-- James McBride

#Race #Differences #Doe

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

Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!
-- James McBride

#Educate

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

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 #Understanding

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

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

The Good Lord Bird don't run in a flock. He Flies alone. You know why? He's searching. Looking for the right tree. And when he sees that tree, that dead tree that's taking all the nutrition and good things from the forest floor. He goes out and he gnaws at it, and he gnaws at it till the thing gets tired and it falls down. And the dirt from it raises other trees. It gives them good things to eat. It makes 'em strong. Gives 'em life. And the circle goes 'round.
-- James McBride

#Running #Strong #Fall

The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.
-- James McBride

#Jesus #Men #Frogs

God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you.
-- James McBride

#Caring

Sometimes it seemed like the truth was a bandy-legged soul who dashed from one side of the world to the other and I could never find him.
-- James McBride

#Soul #World #Sides

Put yourself in God’s hands and you can’t go wrong.
-- James McBride

#Hands

The black church will accept anybody.
-- James McBride

#Black #Church #Accepting

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

#America #Black #Want

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

#Cancer

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

#Writing #Cutting #Fats

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.
-- James McBride

#Lying #White #Black

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 McBride

#Mother #Space #Information

But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That’s what counts.
-- James McBride

#Games #The End Of The Day #Answers

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

#Stories #Biographies #Bills

My family is my career.
-- James McBride

#Careers #My Family

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.
-- James McBride

#Home #Keys #People

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
-- James McBride

#Details #Stories #Journalist

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

#Tools #Narrative #Firsts

I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
-- James McBride

#Vans #Headlights #Stills

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.
-- James McBride

#Color #Wish #Trying

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.
-- James McBride

#Horse #Book #Jazz

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

#Fuel #Not Interested

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.
-- James McBride

#Miracle #Mind #Proud

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

#Tissues #Kind #Form

Be kind to the living.
-- James McBride

#Be Kind #Kind