Zitat des Tages von James McBride:
I don't want to read a book that's depressing.
As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.
The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.
If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
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.
My family is my career.
You have to be able to toss the thing out. You can't fall in love with your characters, and you have to know when to fight - and when to quit.
When I was younger, I was ambitious. Now I'm not ambitious anymore. I just want to be happy. Does that make sense?
My goal is to be able to fill out one of those forms that asks 'Who are you?' and be able to just put 'Human being,' you know?
You can play Mozart all you want and pretend that it gives you class, but what is class, you know? Class is a bus driver on the M103 who gets off the bus to help somebody on board even though he's tired, he's exhausted, and he's two months behind on his mortgage. That's real class.
I don't like a bunch of writers sitting around, puffing smoke, they like this book, he wrote this - tell me a dirty joke, you know. It's just not my style, I've never been that kind of person.
I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.
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.
You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.
I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.
Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
A daily dose of Nietzsche goes a long way.
The black church will accept anybody.
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.
Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.
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.
If you meet your heroes, you're always going to be disappointed. Frederick Douglass was a great man, but would I want my daughter to marry him? Probably not. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's a great man.
Be kind to the living.
Atticus Finch is, you know, he was just his whole - the business of his modesty and his ability to see tomorrow and to try to buttress his knowledge of what was coming for his kids was something that I'll never - as a father I'm not able to do.
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.
I'm trying to get Americans to see that we're all pretty much the same. I believe it; I was taught God doesn't have a color. I want to better the planet a little bit.
I write stories that are already in the air, and I think it's important to have the correct listening device to tune in to that frequency.
I was in a special class in high school for truants. They made us stay together all day. Once a week, they would send us to a guidance counselor. He would sit me in his office and he would try to talk to me.
The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.
Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.
I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.
Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.
I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.
We don't know who John Brown was, and in many ways, his work shaped where we are today. He was a Pennsylvanian. He was the prototypical Yankee who fought back and suffered in doing so.