Quotes By James Earl Jones

More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.

Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race.

My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college.

So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department.

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know.

One day, my youngest uncle - the other one who was first to go to college, Randy - and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up - he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.

In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia.