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I tell them that a simple story is the best story, and that time and place is really crucial to good storytelling. Establish your stories in a specific time and place and get your characters set solidly within that framework before you let them start moving from one room to the next...

— James McBride

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More quotes by James McBride

You ugly enough to keep ants out of a picnic, mister.

Five-Carat Soul (2017)

I’m in the last October of life looking for a few more Aprils. I don’t want to remember no more.

Five-Carat Soul (2017)

Now he wanted more. That’s the problem with Smelly Ones. They got one thing Animals don’t got. They got ambition.

Five-Carat Soul (2017)

Writing is the act of failing at something all the time. Do it with a sense of humor, and it ain’t no big deal. Life is just about falling on stage and getting up, and that’s what writing is all about, too.

You can’t become a good writer unless you have the ability to see that everybody is seeking to ease his or her pain, and everyone’s pain is relative. Blondes don’t really have more fun. There’s always someone who’s going to be bigger or faster or stronger or a better writer or singer or architect than you are. But accepting you where you are is one of the things that fiction helps you do.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James McBride (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.