Quotes from Marlon James

I will murder the world.

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

This cheese and miracle fruit, Tracker, it is like sucking a goat's teat and sweet spices come out.

That's the problem with peace. Peace make you careless.

A bad smell, like a good one, can follow you into tomorrow.

I start to wonder if there be any chance of schooling for any of them, for who will take to teaching a child that could kill her with one bite?

Children cannot help how they are born, they had no choice in it. Choosing to be a fool, though . . .

Your light blacker than black. I know you.

Third-eye magic? Only man need a third eye. Woman fine with two, sometimes one.

I was a fool. I thought you learned the old ways by forgetting the new.

He was not a dark man, but not light either. His color was a nebulous thing, so like his voice, which was too low to be weak but too reedy to be commanding. In a town that preferred things black or white, grayness such as his was not welcome.

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.

My uncle rubbed his chin and looked at me. "You were born when you were found, and that is not even a moon. Do not rush to die so soon," he said. I did not tell him that I was a man already.

This old bastard was becoming my favorite person in Kongor who was not a buffalo.

Living through a day was harder, for no matter how much I stomp one down another was always coming. Watching the little poison frog take on a day is how I learn to live through it. First rip the day in half, time to sleep, time to walk. Then tear it down more, then more, and more after that. Tear a day into pieces you can swallow and soon the whole thing will pass.

The Apostle's robes billowed even though there was no wind. Pastor Bligh's robes were white and purple. Lavender and bleach. Detergent and antiseptic. The Apostle's black and red robes blew with flesh and blood, terror and magnificence.

For when the people flock to your house in mourning, people joined by blood or by law, it don't matter what feeling you carry for them, if you carry any at all. For grief is a burden that don't care about anything other than we bear it. You don't need love to withstand it, you need shoulders. I didn't discover this until now, that mourning is the work of many, and we have only us.

It reminded me to never take the story of any god or spirit or magical being to be all true. If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

and they purr and ooh to my purr

The moon, precious sister, thinks you are the mad one. A sky with open arms yet you will not fly. A river, her legs spread open, yet you will not dive.

Why should anybody want anybody? Just have nothing, just need nothing.

There is one, a girl, I know she hates me, and it bothers me, because I see with her eyes and she is right.

Day was for discipline; night, chaos. Day was for white gloves and skirts below the knee, night was for goat blood on black skin. Day was for stiff lips and Bible verse; night was for an orgy of one with a green banana as her incubus.

Seems what all lands do share are gods so petty and jealous that they would rather destroy all the worlds than have one that moves on without them.