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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James McBride
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: September 4
Jazz Musician
Journalist
Novelist
Saxophonist
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Come
Folks
Important
Inside
Much
Maybe
Men
Understanding
Woman
Colored
White
Covering
Didn
Outer
Thought
Count

More quotes by James McBride

Image
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
Image
The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
James McBride
Image
Family is the last and greatest discovery. It is our last miracle.
James McBride
Image
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
Image
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
Image
As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
James McBride
Image
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
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
So sweet and precious is family life.
James McBride
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
James McBride
Image
Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.
James McBride
Image
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
Image
The black church will accept anybody.
James McBride
Image
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
James McBride