57+ James McBride Quotes (Creative, Insightful And Empathetic)

James McBride is an American writer and musician. He is best known for his memoir The Color of Water, which describes his mother's life as an African-American woman and Jewish-American man. His other works include the novels Miracle at St. Anna, Song Yet Sung, and The Good Lord Bird.

Top 10 James McBride Quotes

1. God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.
2. I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!
3. Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
4. I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
5. First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
6. Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
7. So sweet and precious is family life.
8. The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.
9. I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.
10. The black church will accept anybody.

James McBride Short Quotes

• It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.
• As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
• You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.
• Put yourself in God’s hands and you can’t go wrong.
• Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.
• The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
• Be kind to the living.
• If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
• God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you.
• My family is my career.

James McBride Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

The thing that I do is that when I fail, I just keep quiet about it. I just let it go. It's done. I just go to the next thing. I don't complain, I don't go to - I pick my battles very, very judiciously, and I just assume that there's good in the heart of everybody. — James McBride

It's a real stumper to sit around and try to think in your own head, but when you go into somebody else's head that takes the foot off the breaks. You can think in someone else's head. — James McBride

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

Slavery was a web of relationships, and if people knew how thick the whole business was, they would not make fun of people like Harriet Tubman. They would understand how intelligent she was and how sharp. — James McBride

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

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

There are two responses to really awful things. One is to lament and say, "Oh my God, oh lord." And the other is to laugh at it a little bit, try your best to deal with it and, if you can, forget about it as soon as possible. — James McBride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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

If you're going to cheat and take people's history and you're not writing the Bible, you ain't really so great. But if you try to do it in a way that doesn't hurt too many people, then you probably can get out of bed in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror. — James McBride

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

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

I could have been, and may one day well be a high school English teacher, because I've been given so much I just feel like I have to give something back. The fact that some people consider my work to be good or strong, it's nice, but I know in my heart that if it's not coming - oftentimes it's probably not coming from the best place. — James McBride

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

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

If you're a creative person, you'd better not read what people write about you, because if it's good it'll blow your head up and it'll force you not to take the subway and you'll start taking cabs, and you'd better stay around people, and if it's bad, it just hurts your feelings so much it discourages you. — James McBride

I'm trying to educate people about things that I believe are right, and some of the things that I believe are right might not be right, so I live in constant self-doubt. I think that creates a kind of search that you have to have, and it prevents you from doing a lot of stuff that you would normally do. — James McBride

I just read history books. I read nothing but history books. They have so much to give; I wish I'd majored in history in college. — James McBride

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

I think a lot of the history we've read up to this point, some of it is just off. It's written with the same prejudice that certain networks have when they report the news of the day. — James McBride

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

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

I grew up in the church, and so I feel that God gave me certain things to do, and I'm lucky enough to kind of have figured those things out. I just don't want to die not having tried to help somebody else with what I know. — James McBride

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

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

I think comedy allows people to accept the more difficult parts of history. And history, if it's presented wrong, is just very depressing, particularly the history of slavery. If slavery is presented properly, it's a great story. But I think that within the commercial world of storytelling in which I live, there haven't been many strong works that discuss slavery in ways that are palatable and funny and interesting to the reader. — James McBride

My whole family was - we grew up in New York, but all my relatives and all my father and stepfather's family, they were all from the South. So I like that old Black voice, and I love the sort of old Black man with a corncob pipe, sitting there telling a whopper. — James McBride

Life Lessons by James McBride

1. James McBride's work emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting different cultures and backgrounds. Through his writing, he encourages us to be open-minded and to recognize the beauty in diversity.
2. McBride's stories also illustrate the power of resilience and the strength of the human spirit. He shows us that no matter how difficult life can be, it is possible to overcome obstacles and find joy and hope.
3. Finally, McBride's work teaches us to be mindful of our own privilege and to use it to help those who are less fortunate. He encourages us to use our voices to advocate for social justice and to make a positive difference in the world.