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When You're Interviewing Someone, Even Your Mother - You Have To Sort Of Deal With You Have To Get Some Objective Space From Yourself And The Person But You Also Have To Find What's The Best Way To Get The Information From That Person.

-James McBride

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When You're Interviewing Someone,

James McBride

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When You're Interviewing Someone, Even Your Mother - You Have To Sort Of Deal With You Have To Get Some Objective Space From Yourself And The Person But You Also Have To Find What's The Best Way To Get The Information From That Person.

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When You're Interviewing Someone, Even Your Mother - You Have To Sort Of Deal With You Have To Get Some Objective Space From Yourself And The Person But You Also Have To Find What's The Best Way To Get The Information From That Person.

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.

Some Things In This World Just Ain't Meant To Be, Not In The Times We Want 'em To, And The Heart Has To Hold It In This World As A Remembrance, A Promise For The World That's To Come. There's A Prize At The End Of All Of It, But Still, That's A Heavy Load To Bear.

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.

I Could Have Been, And May One Day Well Be A High School English Teacher, Because I've Been Given So Much I Just Feel Like I Have To Give Something Back. The Fact That Some People Consider My Work To Be Good Or Strong, It's Nice, But I Know In My Heart That If It's Not Coming - Oftentimes It's Probably Not Coming From The Best Place.

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.

Until You Expose The Cancer, You Can't Fix It.

Be Kind To The Living.

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.

First Person Narrative Is A Very Effective Tool But You Have To Know As A Writer How To Make It Work.

I Asked Her If I Was Black Or White. She Replied "you Are A Human Being. Educate Yourself Or You'll Be A Nobody!

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.

African American

God Gived You The Seed. But The Watering And Caring Of That Seed Is Up To You.

Family Is The Last And Greatest Discovery. It Is Our Last Miracle.

Writing For Me Is Cutting Out The Fat And Getting To The Meaning.

Educate Yourself Or You'll Be A Nobody!

I Just Read History Books. I Read Nothing But History Books. They Have So Much To Give; I Wish I'd Majored In History In College.

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.

If You Have The Material It Will Form Itself As A Kind Of Connective Tissue.

When You Walk The Significant Land, The Land Speaks To You - Even If It's 150 Years Later. You Walk The Earth And Good Things Happen. There's Always Something To Be Said For Going To A Spot, Even If There's Nothing There. That's Why You Have A Brain, Your Mind Moves To Other Places When You're Standing At An Important Spot.

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

What Humor Allows You To Do Is To Let The Past Go With Less Pain. It's A Healing Element. It Releases Some Of The Pain From The Shotgun Wound.

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.

...since I Was A Little Boy, She Had Always Wanted Me To Go. She Was Always Sending Me Off On A Bus Someplace, To Elementary School, To Camp, To Relatives In Kentucky, To College. She Pushed Me Away From Her Just As She'd Pushed My Elder Siblings Away When We Lived In New York, Literally Shoving Them Out The Front Door When They Left For College.

I Wish All Critics, No Matter Their Color, Were More Sophisticated When It Comes To The Moral Questions A Film Like 'st. Anna' Is Trying To Raise.

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.

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My Family Is My Career.

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.

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.

I Come To The Understanding That Maybe What Was On The Inside Was More Important, And That Your Outer Covering Didn't Count So Much As Folks Thought It Did, Colored Or White, Man Or Woman.

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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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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.

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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Sometimes It Seemed Like The Truth Was A Bandy-legged Soul Who Dashed From One Side Of The World To The Other And I Could Never Find Him.

I'm A Better Musician Now, And I Rarely Practice Because Age Has Taught Me The Value Of Economy. And I Think I'm A Better Writer Now Because I Don't Waste As Much Time, Dilly-dallying And Sassafrassin' And Sloop And Sloppin' And Frying Eggs. When You Start Writing, Half The Time You're Just Saying Howdy To The Page. My Process Now Is A Little More Lean And Muscular. I Don't Waste A Lot Of Time. When I Had Kids, I Learned How Much Time I Had Before, And How Much Time You Actually Need To Do Something. If You Don't Have Time, You'll Just Do It And Get It Done.

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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.

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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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.

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