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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

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

More quotes by James McBride

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So sweet and precious is family life.
James McBride
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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
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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
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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
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The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
James McBride
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You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.
James McBride
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As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
James McBride
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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
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Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
James McBride
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First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
James McBride
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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
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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
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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
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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
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It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.
James McBride
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...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
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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
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The black church will accept anybody.
James McBride
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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
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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