Marlon James Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I have to remind even him that three feet north of this vagina is a brain. Still, even an American man don't like when a woman's too smart, especially a Third World woman whom it is his duty to educate. — Marlon James

She not no fool, Lilith tell herself. She not a sleeping princess and Robert Quinn is not no king or prince. He just a man with broad shoulders and black hair who call her lovey and she like that more than her own name. She don't want the man to deliver her, she just want to climb in the bed and feel he wrap himself around her. — Marlon James

Caribbean literature only has to be true to itself. It doesn't need colonialism or imperialism. It's always been vibrant. — Marlon James

Drunkenness was a communal and personal pleasure at once, a miserable state only to those not drinking. Sobriety to him was a cruel attack of conscience masking itself as awareness. If sober people were so aware, how come they only spoke truth when drunk? Give him the romance of a drunkard over the indignation of a teetotaler any day. — Marlon James

Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same. — Marlon James

In 1976, Rastafarians were one of the most violated, persecuted groups in Jamaica. They could be beaten within an inch of their lives, or detained for two years, just for being found in a 'proper' neighbourhood. — Marlon James

Something else that her mind answer before the question ask. She know the answer. She can't help nobody out of white man power, not even herself. The woman eye still asking. Lilith don't know how to fix her eye to say no, so she look at the man and the same question come over him face. — Marlon James

I hate that just because I live here I'm supposed to live politics. And there's nothing you can do. If you don't live politics, politics will leave you. — Marlon James

-Come on, Bill. As small as America's dick is, those limeys will stretch across the Atlantic to suck it. — Marlon James

The policeman move up the line saying, You can't fuck, go home. You can't fuck neither remove youself. You look like you can fuck, stay. You go, you go. Hold on, hold on now, you move like is you the one who getting the fucking. Batty boy, remove youself, and you, you better stay. — Marlon James

We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible. — Marlon James

Never think about the past, that shit will fuck you up and you cant fuck it back — Marlon James

But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. — Marlon James

Then the white man talk about how some people trying to use smooth talk to win people over and how totalitarianism always happens with consent and we nod like we understand. — Marlon James

They turned over the reception desk and the poor security guards did the only thing they could do. They ran. — Marlon James

People think it way past the time when anybody can remember who start things first, but don't get the history of the ghetto twist up, decent people. Buntin-Banton and Dishrag start it first. And when PNP win the 1972 election all hell break loose. First — Marlon James

If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince. — Marlon James

Gun Court lockup. He would still be there if Daddy didn't — Marlon James

My mother is so afraid of trouble that trouble sticks to her close just because he never gets tired of proving a point. — Marlon James

What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings. — Marlon James

Can people do that? Can people want to be with someone all the time, okay most of the time and yet also wish they were alone? And not in little compartments but at once? At the same time? All the time? I want to be alone but I need not to be. — Marlon James

After Tuesday come Wednesday. And what you do on Tuesday change the type of Wednesday that going come to you. — Marlon James

Then I wondered if everybody has that person that haunts them, the one that got away. — Marlon James

I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that. — Marlon James

Miss Betsy is looking at me. Some jealousy sure, but every woman have that in them — Marlon James

I'm happy to not know what I think about stuff; I'm happy to change my mind. But it's relatively recently that I've been able to apply that to feelings. I used to like to know what I felt. I didn't want those feelings to be complicated or muddled or clashing. — Marlon James

And all I could think of is Oh Lord here it comes, another white man about to tell me about how much he enjoyed Ocho Rios, but would have enjoyed it so much more if it weren't for all the poverty. And the country is so beatiful and the people so friendly and even in all this tragedy everybody still manages a smile especially the bombor'asscloth children. — Marlon James

You know, most of this feminism business was nothing more than white American women telling non-white women what to do and how to do it, with this patronizing if-you-become-just-like-me-you'll-be-free bullshit, — Marlon James

Sure good is good, but good is something that nobody know. Good is a ghost. You can't get pocket money from good. Jamaica better off bad, because that type of bad work. — Marlon James

Is not gone, you're in the flatness of the deadlands. Time doesn't stop. You watch it move but you are still, like a painting with a Mona Lisa smile. — Marlon James

I think the Greeks were the only people ever to nail character. Their heroes are deeply flawed. — Marlon James

If a man call himself Rasta today, by next week that is him speaking prophecy. He don't have to be too smart either, just know one or two hellfire and brimstone verse from the Bible. Or just claim it come from Leviticus since nobody ever read Leviticus. This is how you know. Nobody who get to the end of Leviticus can still take that book seriously. Even in a book full of it, that book is mad as shit. Don't lie with man as with woman, sure I can run with that reasoning. But don't eat crab? — Marlon James

'The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring. — Marlon James

The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something. — Marlon James

He say how the country will thanks us one day and we nod like we understand. But — Marlon James

But he starting to confuse representing people with owning them, and soon even he going need a reckoning. — Marlon James

At 28 years old, seven years out of college, I was so convinced that my voice outed me as a fag that I had stopped speaking to people I didn't know. — Marlon James

Whenever you hold a gun, it's really the gun that's holding you. — Marlon James

I have a theory that while a man might not always get the wife he wants or needs, he always gets the wife he deserves. — Marlon James

If you going rape me, rape me already and leave me in whichever ditch you leave woman. Just stop bore me with your r'asscloth mouth — Marlon James

I hate when a man feels I'm obligated to disclose my marital status to somebody I don't even know. Even this bullshit about status itself as if married and spinster are the only two choices for defining myself. Or because I'm a woman I'm supposed to have a status at all. — Marlon James

If your depiction of loss doesn't make the reader feel loss, then you didn't depict it right. — Marlon James

The two men who bring guns to the ghetto don't know what to do since when music hit you can't hit it back. — Marlon James

Because homophobia is still largely driven by the church, it's legitimised. It's also tied to sexism, because those two are never far apart. — Marlon James

When building monsters don't be surprised when they become monstrous. — Marlon James

Is true, you do feel better about things the further you run from it — Marlon James

This is a story of several killings, of boys who meant nothing to a world still spinning, — Marlon James

The white man say we're fighting for freedom from totalitarianism, terrorism and tyranny, but nobody know what he mean. I — Marlon James

I just need to fucking breathe — Marlon James

Everybody know that condom and birth control was white man scheme to kill off black people, but he don't care. — Marlon James

What making love feel like?"
"Making love? Like the longest sweetest tickling. Then it turn into something else and bump come up under your skin and is like one wave hit you toe and wash all the way up to you head, sometime one, two, three time. You never know two people could make that one feeling. With Benjy, me used to shake and move so hard because he do it so good. And you pussy? It feel like it just get bless. Making love is good thing, Lilith. — Marlon James

Jamaicans are so unflappable, they might as well be Minnesotans. — Marlon James

Am slowly realizing that even though the Singer is the center of the story that it really isn't his story. Like there's a version of this story that's not really about him, but about the people around him, the ones who come and go that might actually provide a bigger picture than me asking him why he smokes ganja. — Marlon James

People would say that if the Rum Preacher was all that stood between Heaven and Hell, then everybody had better stock up on asbestos. — Marlon James

People with a plan see and wait for the right time. — Marlon James

Learn this, all nice and decent people. An election year commence as soon as the first gunshot buss. — Marlon James

I'm not saying he's stingy. But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. It's not that either. He's from a generation that never expected to get midway up the ladder so when he got there he was too stunned to dare to climb higher. — Marlon James

Papa-Lo start thinking too deep and start thinking that he should be more than what he is. He's the worst kind of fool, the fool who start believing things can get better. — Marlon James

There's a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It's a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is. — Marlon James

Write about only three things: what you love, what you hate, and what you're deeply conflicted about. — Marlon James

Anything you want to know about Kingston's green versus orange war, everything you ever need to know about the rudeboy-cum-gunman is not in Bob Marley's lyrics or in Peter Tosh's but in Marty Robbins's "Big Iron." He's — Marlon James

A lot of women but they are all moving. It takes me a while to see that they are all getting something to give to the men, food, a stool, water, matches for their weed, more food, juice from big Igloos. Livication and liberation my ass, if I wanted to live in a Victorian novel I at least want men who know how to get a decent haircut. — Marlon James

Soldier don't act like we is crime and them is order, soldier act like we is enemy and this is war. — Marlon James

My first novel, 'John Crow's Devil,' freed me up to write about the past, and 'The Book of Night Women' freed me up to have a book totally based on voice and being very spontaneous. — Marlon James

We're not big on irony in Jamaica, sarcasm and double-talk. We tend to say things plainly, sometimes to the point of boredom. — Marlon James

Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike. — Marlon James

Fucking hell. Shit sounds like I'm writing for ladies who lunch on Fifth Avenue. Unending vortex of ugly? Holy sensationalism, Batman! Who the fuck am I writing for? I could move in closer, get to the real Singer, but I'll just fail like every other journalist — Marlon James

- Little pussy like me still have bigger cock than the two of them, she say. She pull the gag out of Sacco mouth. - What you gonna do, Miss — Marlon James

Because every man who fight monster become a monster too, and there be at least one woman in Kingston who think me is the killer of all things name hope. — Marlon James

Bad feeling is a country no woman want to visit. So they take good feeling any which way it come. Sometime that good feeling come by taking on a different kind of bad feeling. — Marlon James

Seem that if baby get left in manger he would scratch up, bite up and dead by the third day. But white people think this be the greatest thing. The baby grow up and they kill him, and white people think this be even greater. It make plenty sense that white people would get so much mirth and joy out of this 'cause nobody kill for fun like backra. — Marlon James

One of the things I fucking hate about my fellow Americans: whenever they fly to a foreign country, first thing they do, they try to find as much of America as they can get their hands on, even if it's food in the shitty cafeteria. — Marlon James

- Do you know what we mean by Cold War?
- War don't have no temperature. — Marlon James

You never know when people's dreams are connected to you before you're gone and then there's nothing to do, but watch them die in a different way, slow, limb by limb, system by system. — Marlon James

A lot of time, I'd spell things in standard English instead of phonetically because I want people to understand what's going on. It's also very lyrical, and the great thing about lyrical prose is even when you're not totally sure of the words, you can be swayed by the musicality of it. — Marlon James

All the time she's silent. All the women were silent except the white one talking to Trent. If it wasn't for the red, green and gold and that the skirts are often denim, I'd think I was surrounded by Muslim women. — Marlon James

You see and wait, — Marlon James

I want her to look at me and smile just to show that she knows that I know that she knows — Marlon James

Woman breed baby, but man can only make Frankenstein. — Marlon James

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview. — Marlon James

As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator. — Marlon James

Dead. It sounds final but it's a word missing an ing. — Marlon James

I laugh because me been dancing with shadow in the dawn and in the night. Even in broad, bright daylight we searching for the dark. — Marlon James

My mother sings One day at a time sweet Jesus, and even Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it's some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time. It's the way I've discovered to not do a damn thing. If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours, then half hours, then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time to bite size. It's like dealing with losing a man. If you can bear it for one minute, then you can swallow two, then five, then another five and on and on. If I don't want to think about my life, I don't have to think about life at all, just hold for one minute, then two, then five, then another five, before you know it, a month can pass and you don't even notice because you've only been counting minutes. — Marlon James

He said he had evidence that the Company was giving the opposition party money, which was just preposterous considering what bad form it would have been, trusting anybody in the Third World with money. — Marlon James

Then coffin, black with silver handles with the dead boy in a black velvet suit. If you're never gonna sweat why not go out in winter style? — Marlon James

I wanted a picture of Jamaica that isn't in books, and certainly not in novels. — Marlon James

I know all his sounds because I never sleep. Up all night, sleep all day there are names for women like me. Women like me don't sleep. We know that the night is no friend of us. Night does things, brings people, swallows you up. Night never makes you forget but it enters dreams to make you remember. Night is a game where I wait, I count off until I see the little pink streak cut through our window and I go outside to see the sun rise over the sea. And congratulate myself for making it, because I swear, every night. Every night. — Marlon James

Now he is a man who could talk to God and the devil and make them work they difference
as long as neither of them have a woman. — Marlon James

And killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness. — Marlon James

- You different, Lilith. You have more darkness 'bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her. - Me turning into something, Lilith say. — Marlon James

If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours then half hours then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time into bite sized. — Marlon James

Homer say, Pretty gal go a river and see herself in water. Pretty gal drown when she go down to kiss herself. — Marlon James

I want to lie down in the grass on the sidewalk and I want to run and keep running. — Marlon James

This is the thing about redheads, isn't it? No matter how long you've lived with them, you're always surprised when they turn and look straight at you. — Marlon James

I see the calm and hear the calm and know the calm can't last. Not for me, not for him, not for Kingston, not for Jamaica. For — Marlon James

I'm really interested in how non-American countries process race. — Marlon James

Nineteen seventy-six come and bring an election with it. The man who bring guns to the ghetto made it clear, that there is no way that socialist government should win again. — Marlon James

And that's all this Prime Minister needed, a nice multi-syllable word like destabilization to turn it into a fucking jingle. But he threw us on the defensive in a way that I'll make sure never happens again. Of course the only people listening was Penthouse magazine. Goddamn, what does it mean when the conscience of America airbrushes pussy for a living? — Marlon James

Only a matter of time before you make enemies as ruthless as you, after all you're the one raising the bar — Marlon James