Quotes from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“And killing don’t need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“If it no go so, it go near so. —Jamaican proverb”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“The dream didn’t leave, people just don’t know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“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.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“But sometimes when you’re too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“—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.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“That’s what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary device.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“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.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“because people so poor that they can’t even afford shame and I wait.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“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,”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“My mother sings One day at a time sweet Jesus, and even Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it’s some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time. It’s the way I’ve discovered to not do a damn thing. If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours, then half hours, then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time to bite size. It’s like dealing with losing a man. If you can bear it for one minute, then you can swallow two, then five, then another five and on and on. If I don’t want to think about my life, I don’t have to think about life at all, just hold for one minute, then two, then five, then another five, before you know it, a month can pass and you don’t even notice because you’ve only been counting minutes.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Living people wait and see because they fool themselves that they have time. Dead people see and wait.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Woman breed baby, but man can only make Frankenstein.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“People who say they don’t have a choice just too coward to choose.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Nobody in the game uses their feet, but it’s football. I love how Americans can just claim something to be whatever they feel it is, despite clear evidence it’s not. Like a football game with nobody using any feet that takes forever.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“There’s a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It’s a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Nobody ever own a gun. You don’t know that until you own one.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“You ever feel like home is the one place you can’t go back to? It’s like you promise yourself when you got out of bed and combed your hair that this evening, when I get back I’ll be a different woman in a new place. And now you can’t go back because the house expects something from you.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“When building monsters don't be surprised when they become monstrous.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“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. Up is everything and down just means all the white people want to party on your street on Sunday night to feel realness. Midway is nowhere.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“—Do you know what we mean by Cold War?
—War don’t have no temperature.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Is true, you do feel better about things the further you run from it”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“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.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“People stupid. The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I tell myself that I tolerate Kimmy because she could never survive me even once talking to her the way she talks to me. I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I might be a snob, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, still coasting around because I have nothing to do now that my life’s dream to fuck and breed for Che Guevara blew up in my face. Nor am I hanging out with rich people in West Kings House who now don’t wash their hair and calling themselves I-man to upset their parents, when everybody knows in two years they’re going right back to their father’s shipping company to take it over, and marry whichever Syrian bitch just win Miss Jamaica.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“Papa-Lo start thinking too deep and start thinking that he should be more than what he is. He’s the worst kind of fool, the fool who start believing things can get better.”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I see seven people in one room and one pregnant and people fucking anyway because people so poor that they can’t even afford shame and I wait”
― Marlon James, quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings

About the author

Popular quotes

“Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England”
― Lauren Willig, quote from The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

“Well, you look…” Mirabeau hesitated as Lissianna reached them, then finally finished with, “the same. What happened?”
“Anemic.” She spat the word with annoyance.
“But he looked so healthy,” Jeanne protested.
“Padded shoulders and bottled tan,” she said. “And that’s not all.”
“What else could there be?” Mira asked dryly.
Lissianna grimaced. “He had a cucumber down his pants.”
Jeanne gave a disbelieving giggle, but Mirabeau groaned, and said, “It must have been a seedless English cucumber, the man looked huge.”
Lissianna gaped. “You looked?”
“You didn’t?” she countered.

-Mirabeau, Jeanne, & Lissianna”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from A Quick Bite

“...called nine-one-one," Howie was saying, "and then I heard something in the alleyway, so I went back there and" --Howie coughed-- "and valiantly attacked his knife with my guts, to no avail."

"Did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him?"

Howie smiled wanly. "Yeah. He was about yay long" --he held up his hands, four inches apart-- "thin, made of steel. Pointy. Sharp.”
― Barry Lyga, quote from I Hunt Killers

“This was freedom; to feel what the heart desired with no thought to the opinion of the rest... She was free, for love liberates.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from The Fifth Mountain

“Professional wrestling is simply the most modern interpretation of an ancient tradition of stylized verbal battles between enemies.  From the time that Homer recorded the Iliad, the emergence of what Scottish scholars call ‘flyting’—” “That would be a verbal battle preceding a physical one, but considered equally as important to the overall outcome,” Carwyn interjected.   “Exactly.  Throughout world myth, warriors have engaged in a verbal struggle that is as symbolically important as the battle itself.  You can see examples in early Anglo-Saxon literature—” “You’ve read Beowulf, haven’t you, English major?” Giovanni glanced at the priest, but continued in his most academic voice.  “Beowulf is only one example, of course.  The concept is also prevalent in various Nordic, Celtic, and Germanic epic traditions.  Even Japanese and Arabic literature are rife with examples.”  “Exactly.”  Carwyn nodded along.  “See, modern professional wrestling is following in a grand epic tradition.  Doesn’t matter if it’s staged, and it doesn’t matter who wins, really—” “Well, I don’t know about—” “What matters,” Carwyn shot his friend a look before he continued, “is that the warriors impress the audience as”
― Elizabeth Hunter, quote from A Hidden Fire

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.