James McBride

“I grew up in a house with a lot of kids, brothers and sisters. So I don't mind a lot of talking, yelling, playing. I can tune most of that out.”

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

“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.”

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

“My main problem with fiction is that once my characters get moving, you just have to follow them along and get out of the way of the story, but sometimes they pull me in too many directions, and I need to focus.”

“I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.”

“I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.”

“I don't come from Lake Wobegon, and that world is not mine. It's not that funny to me. It's funny to other people, and I'm not judging it, but the world that I come from is not considered funny by other people as well. There's so much pain in it.”

“The James Brown story is not about James Brown. It's about who's getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more.”

“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.”

“I can't be a creative person if I'm a celebrity.”

“When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.”

“My father died in 1957, just before I was born. My mother went to her Jewish aunt, who slammed the door in her face.”

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

“I split my time between a small town in New Jersey and New York City.”

“You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.”

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

“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.”

“When I was coming up, a lot of serious jazz players couldn't stand funk.”

“When you glorify violence, then it comes back to bite you.”