Marlon James

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

“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.”

“Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike.”

“I'm happy to not know what I think about stuff; I'm happy to change my mind. But it's relatively recently that I've been able to apply that to feelings. I used to like to know what I felt. I didn't want those feelings to be complicated or muddled or clashing.”

“He said he had evidence that the Company was giving the opposition party money, which was just preposterous considering what bad form it would have been, trusting anybody in the Third World with money.”

“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.”

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

“Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.”

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

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

“A lot of time, I'd spell things in standard English instead of phonetically because I want people to understand what's going on. It's also very lyrical, and the great thing about lyrical prose is even when you're not totally sure of the words, you can be swayed by the musicality of it.”

“I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.”

“In 1976, Rastafarians were one of the most violated, persecuted groups in Jamaica. They could be beaten within an inch of their lives, or detained for two years, just for being found in a 'proper' neighbourhood.”

“I come from a very big family from every economic background. Some of the streets I talk about, I've actually walked on because I have family from there. Jamaica has so many contradictions.”

“Bad feeling is a country no woman want to visit. So they take good feeling any which way it come. Sometime that good feeling come by taking on a different kind of bad feeling.”

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

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

“I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.”

“I find the violence in PG13 movies unbearable. This kid will never run home, never have another birthday. His death is slow, nightmarish. And you have to explore the consequences - the people who live on with this death.”

“'The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring.”