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If You're Going To Cheat And Take People's History And You're Not Writing The Bible, You Ain't Really So Great. But If You Try To Do It In A Way That Doesn't Hurt Too Many People, Then You Probably Can Get Out Of Bed In The Morning And Look At Yourself In The Mirror.

-James McBride

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If You're Going To

James McBride

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If You're Going To Cheat And Take People's History And You're Not Writing The Bible, You Ain't Really So Great. But If You Try To Do It In A Way That Doesn't Hurt Too Many People, Then You Probably Can Get Out Of Bed In The Morning And Look At Yourself In The Mirror.

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But What Difference Does It Make? ... When You're Mixed, You See How Absurd This Business Of Race Is.

There Are Two Responses To Really Awful Things. One Is To Lament And Say, "oh My God, Oh Lord." And The Other Is To Laugh At It A Little Bit, Try Your Best To Deal With It And, If You Can, Forget About It As Soon As Possible.

You're Not A Black Man. You're A Human Being In God's Eyes. So When You Sit Down To Talk To Someone And You Talk To Them In Really Intelligent Terms, You Ask Difficult Questions, There's A Militancy That's Assigned To You Without You Asking For It, Because You Are Simply Judged By What You Look Like. If You're A White Person Asking The Same Questions, You'd Be One Of These Cnn Guys And Say How Brilliant He Is. That Doesn't Work For You, Because This Is The World We Live In.

My Whole Family Was - We Grew Up In New York, But All My Relatives And All My Father And Stepfather's Family, They Were All From The South. So I Like That Old Black Voice, And I Love The Sort Of Old Black Man With A Corncob Pipe, Sitting There Telling A Whopper.

Testosterone Is A Sex Hormone, And I Think It Is The Most Social Of Hormones. The Major Social Effect Of Testosterone Is To Orient Us Toward Issues Of Sex And Power. By The End Of Puberty Testosterone Levels In Males Are 8 To 10 Times Higher Than In Females, But Decrease With Age.

The Thing That I Do Is That When I Fail, I Just Keep Quiet About It. I Just Let It Go. It's Done. I Just Go To The Next Thing. I Don't Complain, I Don't Go To - I Pick My Battles Very, Very Judiciously, And I Just Assume That There's Good In The Heart Of Everybody.

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.

Educate Yourself Or You'll Be A Nobody!

The Good Lord Bird Don't Run In A Flock. He Flies Alone. You Know Why? He's Searching. Looking For The Right Tree. And When He Sees That Tree, That Dead Tree That's Taking All The Nutrition And Good Things From The Forest Floor. He Goes Out And He Gnaws At It, And He Gnaws At It Till The Thing Gets Tired And It Falls Down. And The Dirt From It Raises Other Trees. It Gives Them Good Things To Eat. It Makes 'em Strong. Gives 'em Life. And The Circle Goes 'round.

The Act Of Choosing What To Place In Your Piece When You're A Historian Or A Non-fiction Writer Already Renders It Into Fiction For Someone Else. In Some Ways Fiction Comes A Lot Closer To Reality. When You Start Talking About Something As Brutal As Slavery And Life In The American West, It's Really Important To Take A Non- Judgmental Stance. We Romanticize A Great Deal About Life In The American West, But I Thank God I Wasn't Living During That Time. No Matter What Color You Were, It Was Rough, Crude, Tough Living.

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If You're A Creative Person, You'd Better Not Read What People Write About You, Because If It's Good It'll Blow Your Head Up And It'll Force You Not To Take The Subway And You'll Start Taking Cabs, And You'd Better Stay Around People, And If It's Bad, It Just Hurts Your Feelings So Much It Discourages You.

There Are Some Really Great Books That Have Been Written About Slavery, But I Don't Think That The Discourse About It In Society Has Been Very Accurate Or Healthy. I Don't Think We've Come Up With Ways To Tell It That Don't Insult People Or Hit Them In The Wrong Way. Part Of The Problem Is That Most People Don't Really Understand What Slavery Was Anyway. Most White People Didn't Own Slaves. Slavery Was A Way Of Life, Just Like Driving Cars Is A Way Of Life Now. It Doesn't Mean That It Was Right.

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As A Journalist, I Never Critiqued Anyone. I Never Review Books. I've Never Felt Qualified As A Musician To Say Whether Someone Is A Good Musician Or A Bad Musician. What Happens With Black Writers And Black Artists Is That If You're Critiqued, For Example, By A Black Historian Who Wants To Get His Name On The Cover Of "the New York Times," And He Says Something, Like, Wacky, Well, He'll Get His Name On The Cover Of "the New York Times" And He Might Get Tenure, And Your Career Suffers.

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If You're Going To Cheat And Take People's History And You're Not Writing The Bible, You Ain't Really So Great. But If You Try To Do It In A Way That Doesn't Hurt Too Many People, Then You Probably Can Get Out Of Bed In The Morning And Look At Yourself In The Mirror.

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