247 Quotes by James McBride

John Brown was the abolitionist to end all abolitionists. People thought he was crazy. He was like John Coltrane playing free jazz, exhausting all possibilities in his approach to harmony and improvisation.

Historians will tell you that they deal with fact and empirical evidence. But that doesn't really help me understand a person.

James Brown's life was really a metaphor for our inability to talk about matters like race and class in America.

A typewriter forces you to keep going, to march forward.

Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.

You make your own luck by working hard, you know?

All of us want to be Superman when we grow up, fighting for truth and justice. That's part of what drives me as a writer.

I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.

I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.