Quotes By James Earl Jones

No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement.

It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.

So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

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.

I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers.

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.

Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.

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.

Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.

You weren't going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.

So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.

My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.

We children learned responsibility automatically.

When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that.

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him.

Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.

You don't build a bond without being present.

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.

The goal wasn't to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about - the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was.

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.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.

There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond.