"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 10th Anniversary Edition)

"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)

"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 10th Anniversary Edition)

"And when James asked what color God was, she said, God is the color of water."
— James McBride

"...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 10th Anniversary Edition)

"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)

"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)

"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 10th Anniversary Edition)

"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)