A biography for James McBridehasn’t been written yet.
“My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history.”
“Anyone can write your own life story.”
“I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.”
“Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.”
“I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over. It's all in God's hands.”
“My mother tried her best to give us a sense of self-esteem.”
“When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.”
“When we're talking about slavery... we're really talking about the web of relationships that exists between whites and blacks from 1619 to 1865 to now.”
“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.”
“There is a lot wrong with the church.”
“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.”
“Spike Lee listens a lot. He's one of the quietest creative people I've ever met.”
“When the great jazz and blues clubs closed - joints where the cash register rang loudly and there wasn't ESPN on TV over the bandstand, and people smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and hollered 'Play on!' - When those places closed, I was pretty much done.”
“Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.”
“I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.”
“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.”
“The whole notion of owning a person is so ludicrous, there's plenty of room to make fun.”