James McBride

Not a week after Annie put her foot in Mrs. Huffmaster's duff, the Captain upped and laid down the date.

Whatever you is, Onion," he said, "be it full.

God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.

I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

If you don't have humor, you're not going to make it. You're going to be one of those people who walks around with your head about to explode.

Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.

We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.

That was the Old Man__ favorite song. __low Ye Trumpet._ Them Negroes was far away from the doings on the plaza where the Old Man was to hang, way out from it. But they sang it loud and clear_.Blow ye trumpet blowBlow ye trumpet blow_.You could hear their voices for a long way, seemed like they lifted up and carried all the way into the sky, lingering in the air long afterward. And up above the church, high above it, a strange black-and-white bird circled __ound, looking for a tree to roost on, a bad tree, I expect, so he could alight upon it and get busy, so that it would someday fall and feed the others.

The old face, crinkled and dented with canals running every which way, pushed and shoved up against itself for a while, till a big old smile busted out from beneath 'em all, and his grey eyes fairly glowed. It was the first time I ever saw him smile free. A true smile. It was like looking at the face of God. And I knowed then, for the first time, that him being the person to lead the colored to freedom weren't no lunacy. It was something he knowed true inside him. I saw it clear for the first time. I knowed then, too, that he knowed what I was - from the very first.

See, a marriage needs love. And God. And a little money. That's all. The rest you can deal with. It's not about black or white. It's about God and don't let anyone tell you different. All this Jungle fever! Shoot! The Jungle fever goes away, honey, and then what are you gonna do?

We all got to die," she said. "But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom.

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.

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.

It's God's world. He washes you clean. He makes you whole. He puts rain in your garden and sunshine in your heart. "Clarence

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.

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.