247 Quotes by James McBride

The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don’t want to touch.

So he drinks and grows plants and goes to church,” Potts said. “So far, he sounds Catholic.

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.

The plain truth is that you’d have an easier time standing in the middle of the Mississippi River and requesting that it flow backward than to expect people of different races and backgrounds to stop loving each other, stop marrying each other, stop starting families, stop enjoying the dreams that love inspires. Love is unstoppable. It is our greatest weapon, a natural force, created by God. I.

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 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.

There ain’t nothing gets a Yankee madder than a smart colored person, of which I reckon they figured there was only one in the world, Mr. Douglass.

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.

The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. It’s what made the river flow, the ocean swell, and the tide rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable.