James McBride > Quotes

“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.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“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, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, 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

“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.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“God I am looking for the one thing I have never felt but once, and I would walk through heaven and earth to find it, if he would but let me find him, so that I could feel it; and if I were to feel it again I would never leave that feeling, or him that gave it to me." - The Dreamer”
― James McBride, Song Yet Sung

“...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. ”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“And when James asked what color God was, she said, God is the color of water.”
― James McBride

“The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“The enemy was irony and truth and hypocrisy, that was the real enemy. That was the enemy that was killing him.”
― James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna

“Sometimes without conscious realization, our thoughts, our faith, out interests are entered into the past. We talk about other times, other places, other persons, and lose our living hold on the present. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time we would be happy. But anyone who attempts to reenter the past is sure to be disappointed. Anyone who has ever revisited the place of his birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered it. He may walk along old familiar streets and roads, but he is a stranger in a strange land. He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. He has gone onto a new and different life, and in thinking longingly of the past, he has been giving thought and interest to something that no longer really exists.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“The greatest gift that anyone can give anyone is LIFE. And the greatest sin a person can do is to take away that life. NEXT to that, all rules and religions in the worldare secondary, mere words and beliefs that people CHOOSE to believe and KILL and HATE by.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“I was ashamed of my mother, but see, love didn't come natural to me until I became a Christian.- Ruth McBride”
― James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“There ain't no time for foolishness now. You in it now. You got to stay in it.”
― James McBride, Song Yet Sung