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The Basic Thing Is To Be Humble, And Pretend You're A Bartender In The Tavern Of Life. Don't Get Too Comfortable And Don't Really Listen To Anybody Else. Don't Stand Around With A Bunch Of Writers And Talk About Writing. You Know When You See Plumbers At A Plumbers Convention, Usually They're Not Talking About Plumbing: They're Talking About Whatever It Is That Two Men Happen To Talk About. They're Talking About Sports, Their Wives And Children. I Just Tell My Students, Don't Talk About Writing Too Much, Just Go Out And Do It. Find Out Whatever You Need To Get To The Mainland.

-James McBride

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The Basic Thing Is

James McBride

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The Basic Thing Is To Be Humble, And Pretend You're A Bartender In The Tavern Of Life. Don't Get Too Comfortable And Don't Really Listen To Anybody Else. Don't Stand Around With A Bunch Of Writers And Talk About Writing. You Know When You See Plumbers At A Plumbers Convention, Usually They're Not Talking About Plumbing: They're Talking About Whatever It Is That Two Men Happen To Talk About. They're Talking About Sports, Their Wives And Children. I Just Tell My Students, Don't Talk About Writing Too Much, Just Go Out And Do It. Find Out Whatever You Need To Get To The Mainland.

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It Was Always So Hot, And Everyone Was So Polite, And Everything Was All Surface But Underneath It Was Like A Bomb Waiting To Go Off. I Always Felt That Way About The South, That Beneath The Smiles And Southern Hospitality And Politeness Were A Lot Of Guns And Liquor And Secrets.

I Can Write Anywhere Really. I Have A Hard Time Writing When The Birds Are Tweeting And The Brooks Are Running Outside. I've Tried That Several Times, For Months At A Time, Trying To Write In A Quiet, Wonderful Place Where Birds Are Twittering And Coffee's Brewing. And Nothing Happens. But If I'm In An Old Dump Like My Old Apartment And I Can't Find My Fingernail Clippers And Nothing's Working Except The Old Tea Maker, That's Just Great. You Always Have To Find And Live In A Place That's A Little Uncomfortable When You're A Writer. You Need A Burr In Your Side.

God Is The Color Of Water. Water Doesn't Have A Color.

Be Kind To The Living.

Newt Gingrich Wrote A Novel, And He's A Short Story. Bill Clinton Wrote A Biography, And He's A Novel.

There Has To Be Some Mystery In Life, Because The Joy Of Being A Writer And The Joy Of Being A Musician Is The Joy Of Discovery. I Don't Want Someone Discovering For Me What I Should Be Discovering On My Own. If A Person Is Discovering For Me, Then They're Living For Me. It's My Responsibility, Indeed It's My Privilege, To Go Out And Discover The World For Myself.

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.

I Think A Lot Of The History We've Read Up To This Point, Some Of It Is Just Off. It's Written With The Same Prejudice That Certain Networks Have When They Report The News Of The Day.

Music And Writing Do Fold Together In The Sense That You Have To Have A Certain Level Of Skill In Order To Execute Your Ideas And You Need A Medium. The Idea Of Improvisation Is One That Many Writers Fall Into, And I Improvise A Great Deal When I'm Writing, But There's A Structural Framework That I'm Working Around, And That Takes More Time Than The Actual Writing. Once The Characters Get To Yapping And Talking, They'll Move From One Room To The Next, And I Just Have To Make Sure That The House Is Built. That's Really Hard, That's The Kind Of Thing That Sits With You All Day Long.

But At The End Of The Day, There Are Some Questions That Have No Answers, And Then One Answer That Has No Question: Love Rules The Game. Every Time. All The Time. That’s What Counts.

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

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The Question Of Religion In Black America Is Something Filmmakers Don't Want To Touch.

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 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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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.

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I Felt Like A Tinker Toy Kid Building My Own Self Out Of One Of Those Toy Building Sets; For As She Laid Her Life Before Me, I Reassembled The Tableau Of Her Words Like A Picture Puzzle, And As I Did, So My Own Life Was Rebuilt.

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