Quotes from 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.

But she didn't say it, she sing it so we know that it's you. And plenty in the ghetto, in Copenhagen City, in Rema, and for sure in the Eight Lanes sing it too. 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.

Can't play it safe when nowhere safe anymore

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

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.

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

What? —How the girl getting

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.

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.

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

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

Louis Johnson still don't really believe I can read, which might be why he keep showing me grocery list upside down and saying it's a classified document.

This Singer think because he come from where we come from that he understand how we live. But he don't understand nothing. Everybody think the way him think when they leave and come back. That everything was exactly how they leave it. But we different. We harder than him and we don't care. He flee before you turn into something like we. And

the wait is just as bad because you can't do anything else in Jamaica but wait for something to happen to you.

I never miss the country not even once. I hate nostalgia. Nostalgia is not memory and my memory is too damn good for it.

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 even expected to get midway up the ladder so when he got there he was too stunned to dare climb higher. That's the problem with midway.

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

Preacher tell nigger that God is man and baby. Then he say that God is baby in December but man only four month later. But then he say God is father and he is son and he is spirit. That sound like he breed himself to get himself, then kill himself. White man God perplexing like the white man.

Si es irlandés, te hará reír mucho y hasta las mayores puercadas te parecerán muy sexi. Pero cuanto más rato te quedes, más beberá él, y cuanto más beba, en fin, por cada uno de los siete días siguientes tendrás un monstruo distinto.

Weeper stare at me hard then laugh. Nothing like a Weeper laugh, it start like a wheeze then somewhere, and you never know where, it explode into the biggest thing in the room. Who teach this little black man that he can laugh so?

Luis Hernán Rodrigo de las Casas, but everybody calls me Doctor Love. —Why? —Because counter-revolution is an act of love, hermano, not war. I'm here to teach you things.

In my lands night is where people to evil to enemies they call friends in the day. It's when sihrs and jinns come play, and people scheme and plot. Children grow to fear it because they think there be monsters . They build a whole thing about it, about night and dark and even the colour black, which is not even a colour here. Not here. Here evil has no qualm with striking at noon. But it leaves night beautiful in look and cool of feel.

I didn't tell him that be on top is to worry. Once you climb to the peak of the mountain, the whole world can take a shot. I know the Singer know that plenty people hate him, but I wonder if he know what shape that hate take.

Hay gente que no hace más que soñar y hay gente que no hace más que actuar, y ambas cosas son buenas y malas. La gente como Josey no tiene visión y la gente como yo no tiene impulso para pasar a la acción.