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There's Such A Big Difference Between Being Dead And Alive, I Told Myself, The Greatest Gift That Anyone Can Give Anyone Else Is Life. And The Greatest Sin A Person Can Do To Another Is To Take Away That Life. Next To That, All The Rules And Religions In The World Are Secondary; Mere Words And Beliefs That People Choose To Believe And Kill And Hate By. My Life Won't Be Lived That Way, And Neither, I Hope, Will My Children's.

-James McBride

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There's Such A Big

James McBride

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There's Such A Big Difference Between Being Dead And Alive, I Told Myself, The Greatest Gift That Anyone Can Give Anyone Else Is Life. And The Greatest Sin A Person Can Do To Another Is To Take Away That Life. Next To That, All The Rules And Religions In The World Are Secondary; Mere Words And Beliefs That People Choose To Believe And Kill And Hate By. My Life Won't Be Lived That Way, And Neither, I Hope, Will My Children's.

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I'm One Of The Few Black Writers, Or African American Writers, Who Managed To Work My Way Through The System So That It Has Allowed Me To Speak In A Kind Of Free Way. But Most African American Writers Don't Have That. They Don't Have That Opportunity, They Don't Have That.

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My Family Is My Career.

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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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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