James McBride
James McBride
aim failure full law living medical ok school students success teaches useful
The important thing is for students to know that it's OK to fail. Failure teaches success you don't have to aim for law school or medical school as alternatives for living a full and useful life.
information talk themselves
They talk themselves out of everything else, there's nothing else but you and the information you want, and they give it to you.
chance four great last site strip
All four of them want it pretty badly. It's the last great site on the Strip and there's never going to be another chance like this.
added art believe certainly children created digital picture pop portraits themselves
The children created pop art portraits of themselves by tracing over a digital picture on the computer. It certainly added something extra. At the end of the class, they couldn't believe that it was already playtime.
new-york father men
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.
jobs voice people
You know what needs to be done when you're a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if you're an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you don't really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if you're doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. I'm hoping that my work will surpass my own life.
cancer
Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.
writing cutting fats
Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
biographies bills stories
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
church lucky want
I grew up in the church, and so I feel that God gave me certain things to do, and I'm lucky enough to kind of have figured those things out. I just don't want to die not having tried to help somebody else with what I know.
educate
Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!
men white-man understanding
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.
friends children school
My black friends never asked me how much money I made, or what school my children went to, or anything like that. They just said, "Come as you are."
teacher strong nice
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.