A biography for James Earl Joneshasn’t been written yet.
“I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know?”
“I consider myself a novice film actor.”
“The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.”
“I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.”
“So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.”
“When you are mute, you become a good listener - it's all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound.”
“My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college.”
“I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.”
“There's nothing I would retire for, so I won't retire.”
“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.”
“And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.”
“We children learned responsibility automatically.”
“Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.”
“I think stutterers are funny. And I know it's rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is okay because I know why they're funny. They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.”
“I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.”
“One day, my youngest uncle - the other one who was first to go to college, Randy - and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up - he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.”
“I love doing commercials! Usually, they have enough money that they can take time and photograph it well.”
“Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, 'Okay, I'll do that.'”