My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.
James Earl Jones

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

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

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

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.
James Earl Jones

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

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

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.
James Earl Jones

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?
James Earl Jones

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

So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class.
James Earl Jones

The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
James Earl Jones

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.
James Earl Jones

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.
James Earl Jones

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

We children learned responsibility automatically.
James Earl Jones

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.
James Earl Jones

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.
James Earl Jones

You don't build a bond without being present.
James Earl Jones

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.
James Earl Jones