Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)

by Marlon James

Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

we need stories in order to live, don’t we, priest?

Fury is a cloud that leaves my mind empty and my heart black.

Sometimes the only way forward is through. So I walked through.

I was a fool. I thought you learned the old ways by forgetting the new.

was truth and truth was a shifting, slithering thing. Truth was making me sick.

The first man was jealous of the first woman.

Say this about a child. In you they will always find a use. Say this as well. They cannot imagine a world where you do not love them, for what else should one do but love them?

The Leopard says too many things that slip off him like water does oil, but sticks to me like a stain.

Something to fight for, or nothing to lose, which makes you a finer warrior? I have no answer.

She knew he would kill her. Better to be with the ancestors than to live bonded to somebody else, who might be kind, who might be cruel, who might even make you master to many slaves of your own, but was still master over you.

“An elder told me that peace is a rumor,

She was naked and so dirty that she looked white.

“Our wisdom is foolishness to the foolish.”

She must have been a witch. She had the air and the smell of witches—lemongrass and fish,

If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

“One who belongs to no one.” “Or no one belongs to you.”

“No woman is raised for man to use,”

“You took your time. I could have made bread.”

“Is every woman a witch to you, Wolf Eye?”

“The boy is the last son of the last honest man in the ten and three kingdoms.

A man will suffer misery to get to the bottom of truth, but he will not suffer boredom.

“I am a poet among prefects.”

“Pursuit, Tracker. I leave capture to others.”

“You trusted this prince to a woman who sold him as soon as she had the chance.”

Truly, you are an imbecile’s idea of an imbecile. The sun has not even set on their deaths and you have confessed to the murder already.

“Fuck all lords. All these kings also come from the womb of woman.

Far better use of she body than she ever go use it,” Sogolon

Too much

The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.

“Do you not know, brave warrior? Both halves are wicked.

Here is truth. I was in love and I was in boredom, both at the same time, two rulers in the same house.

What lives we lead. Remorse for what we should not have done, regret for what we should.