Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Some of the craziest aspects about 'Weeper' were the things I found out to be true. I mean, true of people.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

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

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

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.

Killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.

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.

Love isn't saying, I love you but calling to say, did you eat

But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now.

If it no go so, it go near so. —Jamaican proverb

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.

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

The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one.

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

That's what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary device.

Bi oju ri enu a pamo. Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

because people so poor that they can't even afford shame and I wait.

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.

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