Top 114 Quotes by James McBride

As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.

You can't live for literature. You can't live for the job.

I think what makes his story unique from others is there is not really one piece of American pop music you hear today that does not have some James Brown in it.

Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.

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.

I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.

There is a lot wrong with the church.

I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.

If you don't have humor, you're not going to make it. You're going to be one of those people who walks around with your head about to explode.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.