Marlon James quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Marlon James

Marlon James Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Marlon James on Wise Famous Quotes.

Can't play it safe when nowhere safe anymore

Me love that man to the max. Me would take a bullet for the Singer. But gentlemens, me can only take one.

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

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

I just need to fucking breathe

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.

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

You see and wait,

- What? - How the girl getting

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

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

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.

Some man never get the woman who cure them from looking for another woman.

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

I was the nerd. Because I was reading. I wasn't into sports. I was really into art. Very geekish about comics. Assumed gay.

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

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

Gorgon say that Callisto was a woman who laugh all her life but never smile once.

Dead people never stop talking.

There was never a single murder in my neighbourhood; there was barely a robbery. It was so suburban, it was almost disappointing.

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.

Living people wait and see because they fool themselves that they have time. Dead people see and wait.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Devil has his part to play.

Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike.

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

Woman breed baby, but man can only make Frankenstein.

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

Something happen when somebody tell you something about yourself even if you already know.

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

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

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

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

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

Politicians rise in the east and set in the west and nothing you can change about them.

I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you.

People who say they don't have a choice just too coward to choose.

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.

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

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.

Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass.

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

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

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

Some people just fated to fuck up even when them smart enough to know better.

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

the dead never stop talking and sometimes the living hear.

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?

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

Pretty much everything I've written is a mix of excitement and fear.

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

When dog kill puss, and puss kill dog, the only one happy is the john-crow.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Maybe because is December. After all, only when we come to Revelation that we take stock of Genesis, right?

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

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

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.

Preacher says there is a god-shaped void in everybody life but the only thing ghetto people can fill a void with is void.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- 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

Nobody ever own a gun. You don't know that until you own one.

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

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

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

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

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

The problem with proving something is that instead of leaving you alone people never stop giving you new things to prove, harder things.