Marlon James

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

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

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.

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. 

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.