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And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.

James Earl Jones

I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know?

James Earl Jones

People

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

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.

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.

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

James Earl Jones

Romantic

Want

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.

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.

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.

I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other.

James Earl Jones

Life

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

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.

We children learned responsibility automatically.

James Earl Jones

Children

Responsibility

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.