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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.

-James McBride

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There Has To Be

James McBride

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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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.

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The Man Was The Finest Preacher. He Could Make A Frog Stand Up Straight And Get Happy With Jesus.

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