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

by Marlon James

I wish people would understand that I have no time for this argument. There is nothing I fight for and nothing I will fight over, so waste none of my time starting fights. Raise your fist and I will break it. Raise your tongue and I will cut it out of your mouth.

All you need to know about Tracker.

I have no guise. I have no look. My face is a forehead wide and round, like the rest of my head. Brows that hang so far over my eyes they give them shade. A nose sloped like a mountain. Lips that feel as thick as my finger when I rub them with red or yellow dust. One eye that is mine and one that is not. I pierced my ears myself, thinking of how my father wore a turban to hide his. But I have no look. That is what people see.

Great self-description.

I wanted to tell him that I had come searching for myself, but those were the words of an idiot. Or like something my father would say, but back then I still thought there was a self to lose, not knowing that one never owns the self.

Quiet is the opposite of sound, not the absence of it.

Kingdoms where people’s skin was paler than sand, and every seven days they ate their own god.

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