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You sure you can handle big woman chat, pickney? You sure you ready for that journey? You think good before you answer. Because some people about to forget that me be the head bloodcloth nigger in here. Now, go peel two potato and don't draw me tongue out in this place. -- 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
Rastaman don't deal with negativity so oppression is now downpression even though there is no up in the word. Dedicate is livicate, I and I, well God knows what that means, but it sounds like somebody trying for their own holy trinity but forgetting the name of the third person. -- 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
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
Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It's like realizing somebody rob you a year late. -- Marlon James
Jah know, sometimes I don't learn till too late, and to know something too late? Well is better you never know as my mother used to say. Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It's like realizing somebody rob you a year late. So -- 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
There was never a single murder in my neighbourhood; there was barely a robbery. It was so suburban, it was almost disappointing. -- Marlon James
This is the first mistake God make. Time. God was a fool to create time. It's the one thing that even he run out of. But me beyond time. Me in the now, which is now which is also then. Then is also soon and soon might as well be if. -- Marlon James
I swear to God I can't remember when I had a handbag. I know for some woman it's like an eleventh finger and you don't even think about it, even if you change every day. But I can't remember the handbag either. Who can run with a handbag? -- Marlon James
Some man never get the woman who cure them from looking for another woman. -- Marlon James
I was the nerd. Because I was reading. I wasn't into sports. I was really into art. Very geekish about comics. Assumed gay. -- Marlon James
And killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness. -- Marlon James
- Do you know what we mean by Cold War?
- War don't have no temperature. -- Marlon James
I'm really interested in how non-American countries process race. -- 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
Caribbean literature only has to be true to itself. It doesn't need colonialism or imperialism. It's always been vibrant. -- 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
We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible. -- 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
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
In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them. -- 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
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
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. -- Marlon James
I'd spent seven years in an all-boys school: 2,000 adolescents in the same khaki uniforms striking hunting poses, stalking lunchrooms, classrooms, changing rooms, looking for boys who didn't fit in. -- Marlon James
Devil has his part to play. -- Marlon James
I think that's what Toni Morrison and Alice Walker understand, the secret language of women. That it's not a secret at all; men just don't know how to listen. -- 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
This is a story of several killings, of boys who meant nothing to a world still spinning, -- 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
him swinging the baton and knocking out my side teeth and cracking my temple so that I can never hear good out of that ear again and saying let that be a lesson to never take you dutty, stinking, ghetto self uptown again. And I see them and I wait. But -- Marlon James
- What? - How the girl getting -- Marlon James
You ever feel like home is the one place you can't go back to? It's like you promise yourself when you got out of bed and combed your hair that this evening, when I get back I'll be a different woman in a new place. And now you can't go back because the house expects something from you. -- Marlon James
Some of the craziest aspects about 'Weeper' were the things I found out to be true. I mean, true of people. -- 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
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
Nobody in the game uses their feet, but it's football. I love how Americans can just claim something to be whatever they feel it is, despite clear evidence it's not. Like a football game with nobody using any feet that takes forever. -- 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
I find the violence in PG13 movies unbearable. This kid will never run home, never have another birthday. His death is slow, nightmarish. And you have to explore the consequences - the people who live on with this death. -- 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
Then I wondered if everybody has that person that haunts them, the one that got away. -- Marlon James
the dead never stop talking and sometimes the living hear. -- Marlon James
Preacher says there is a god-shaped void in everybody life but the only thing ghetto people can fill a void with is void. -- Marlon James
Killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness. Madness -- 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
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
- The problem with a book is that you never know what it's planning to do to you until you're too far into it. -- 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
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
Never think about the past, that shit will fuck you up and you cant fuck it back -- Marlon James
They turned over the reception desk and the poor security guards did the only thing they could do. They ran. -- 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
Love isn't saying, I love you but calling to say, did you eat -- 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
The problem with proving something is that instead of leaving you alone people never stop giving you new things to prove, harder things. -- 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
Some people just fated to fuck up even when them smart enough to know better. -- Marlon James
That's what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary device. -- Marlon James
Me have a rule with woman. If your titty prettier and your body hotter than my woman I'll deal with you. Otherwise, fuck off. -- Marlon James
They like him better when he was the poor cousin that they can feel good for taking notice. I tell him that politician do the same thing to me when they realize me can read. -- 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
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
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
What really boils me blood is that it's not that Daddy didn't have money, but he never could think of a single good reason to spend it. -- 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
People who say they don't have a choice just too coward to choose. -- Marlon James
Gorgon say that Callisto was a woman who laugh all her life but never smile once. -- 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
Police only have to see that me don't have no shoes before he say what the bloodcloth you nasty naiggers doing 'round decent people, and give me two choices. -- 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
People with a plan see and wait for the right time. -- Marlon James
Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike. -- Marlon James
Is true, you do feel better about things the further you run from it -- 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
Shiny like new zinc holding up a roof or a fence right beside old zinc, the material itself a living history of when last the politician did the ghetto a favor. -- Marlon James
Can't play it safe when nowhere safe anymore -- Marlon James
Nobody falls that way without being pushed. I know. And I know how it feels and looks, a body that falls fighting the air all the way down, grabbing onto clumps of nothing and begging once, just once, just goddamn once, Jesus, you sniveling son of a mongrel bitch, just once that air gives grip. -- Marlon James
As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator. -- Marlon James
Jamaicans are so unflappable, they might as well be Minnesotans. -- Marlon James
Something happen when somebody tell you something about yourself even if you already know. -- 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
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
I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you. -- 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
The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one. -- Marlon James
Learn this, all nice and decent people. An election year commence as soon as the first gunshot buss. -- Marlon James
Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass. -- Marlon James
You see and wait, -- Marlon James
Listen.
Dead people never stop talking. Maybe because death is not death at all, just a detention after school. You know where you're coming from and you're always returning from it. You know where you're going though you never seem to get there and you're just dead. Dead. -- Marlon James
Those who think he had lucky breaks are not only unaware of the real story but also fall prey to that sin of the mediocre: bitchiness about others' success -- Marlon James
What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings. -- Marlon James
- Lilith. Named you meself. Did you know Adam had a first wife before Eve? Called her Lilith, but the bitch was too headstrong so got rid of her, he did. Headstrong, another word for uppity. -- Marlon James
Nobody ever own a gun. You don't know that until you own one. -- Marlon James
I grew up with reggae. Reggae is like family. I know it, and there's a type of love and familiarity, but sometimes you want to hang out with other people. -- Marlon James
I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling. -- 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
But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. -- Marlon James
Dead. It sounds final but it's a word missing an ing. -- Marlon James
Write about only three things: what you love, what you hate, and what you're deeply conflicted about. -- Marlon James
Because people so poor that they can't even afford shame and I wait. -- Marlon James
He say how the country will thanks us one day and we nod like we understand. But -- 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
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
I'm not a writer on a mission, and I'm very suspicious of writers on missions, but I'm also not living a false life. -- Marlon James
When building monsters don't be surprised when they become monstrous. -- Marlon James
Me love that man to the max. Me would take a bullet for the Singer. But gentlemens, me can only take one. -- Marlon James
I come from a very big family from every economic background. Some of the streets I talk about, I've actually walked on because I have family from there. Jamaica has so many contradictions. -- Marlon James
-Come on, Bill. As small as America's dick is, those limeys will stretch across the Atlantic to suck it. -- Marlon James
I want to lie down in the grass on the sidewalk and I want to run and keep running. -- Marlon James
Miss Betsy is looking at me. Some jealousy sure, but every woman have that in them -- 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
I wanted a picture of Jamaica that isn't in books, and certainly not in novels. -- Marlon James
Maybe because is December. After all, only when we come to Revelation that we take stock of Genesis, right? -- 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 think the Greeks were the only people ever to nail character. Their heroes are deeply flawed. -- Marlon James
Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same. -- 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
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
Pretty much everything I've written is a mix of excitement and fear. -- 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
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
Everybody know that condom and birth control was white man scheme to kill off black people, but he don't care. -- 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
That's the problem with peace. Peace make you careless. -- Marlon James
But he starting to confuse representing people with owning them, and soon even he going need a reckoning. -- Marlon James
Every time you reach the edge, the edge move ahead of you like a shadow until the whole world is a ghetto, and you wait. -- Marlon James
Whenever you hold a gun, it's really the gun that's holding you. -- Marlon James
After Tuesday come Wednesday. And what you do on Tuesday change the type of Wednesday that going come to you. -- 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
- 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
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
If it no go so, it go near so. - Jamaican proverb -- Marlon James
Dead people never stop talking. -- 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
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
When dog kill puss, and puss kill dog, the only one happy is the john-crow. -- 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
Woman breed baby, but man can only make Frankenstein. -- Marlon James
Living people wait and see because they fool themselves that they have time. Dead people see and wait. -- 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
Politicians rise in the east and set in the west and nothing you can change about them. -- Marlon James
Gun Court lockup. He would still be there if Daddy didn't -- Marlon James
I just need to fucking breathe -- Marlon James