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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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James McBride
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: September 4
Jazz Musician
Journalist
Novelist
Saxophonist
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Choose
World
Expects

More quotes by James McBride

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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
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The black church will accept anybody.
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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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
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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
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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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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
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I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.
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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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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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
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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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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
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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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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
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Family is the last and greatest discovery. It is our last miracle.
James McBride
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God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you.
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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As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
James McBride
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If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
James McBride