The Book of Night Women Quotes

“Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“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.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“She not black, she mulatto. Mulatto, mulatto, mulatto. Maybe she be family to both and to hurt white man just as bad as hurting black man…..Maybe if she start to think that she not black or white, then she won’t have to care about neither man’s affairs. Maybe if she don’t care what other people think she be and start think about what she think she be, maybe she can rise over backra and nigger business, since neither ever mean her any good. Since the blood that run through her both black and white, maybe she be her own thing. But what thing she be?”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Make me tell you something else about reading. You see this? Every time you open this you get free. Freeness up in here and nobody even have to know you get free but you." ~Homer, The Book of Night Women”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Gorgon say that Callisto was a woman who laugh all her life but never smile once.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Every negro walk in a circle. Take that and make of it what you will. A circle like the sun, a circle like the moon, a circle like bad tidings that seem gone but always, always come back.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“She not no fool, Lilith tell herself. She not a sleeping princess and Robert Quinn is not no king or prince. He just a man with broad shoulders and black hair who call her lovey and she like that more than her own name. She don’t want the man to deliver her, she just want to climb in the bed and feel he wrap himself around her.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Black woman hard to laugh, for she must keep it secret and quiet-like for all white man suspicious of negro mirth.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Homer say, Pretty gal go a river and see herself in water. Pretty gal drown when she go down to kiss herself.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“You sure you can handle big woman chat, pickney? You sure you ready for that journey? You think good before you answer. Because some people about to forget that me be the head bloodcloth nigger in here. Now, go peel two potato and don't draw me tongue out in this place.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“—You different, Lilith. You have more darkness ’bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her. —Me turning into something, Lilith say.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“—Lilith. Named you meself. Did you know Adam had a first wife before Eve? Called her Lilith, but the bitch was too headstrong so got rid of her, he did. Headstrong, another word for uppity.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“What making love feel like?"

"Making love? Like the longest sweetest tickling. Then it turn into something else and bump come up under your skin and is like one wave hit you toe and wash all the way up to you head, sometime one, two, three time. You never know two people could make that one feeling. With Benjy, me used to shake and move so hard because he do it so good. And you pussy? It feel like it just get bless. Making love is good thing, Lilith.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“No woman can afford to feel anything for a man in 1801. That be the source of eternal misery.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“But some fire don’t go out, they go quiet under the ash, waiting for one little dry stick to feed. So the white man sleep with one eye open, waiting for the fire next time. That fire coming.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“But sometime, a negro get tired of white man stomping so he grab the foot, twist and break it. Sometime a negro say, Enough done be enough now.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Preacher tell nigger that God is man and baby. Then he say that God is baby in December but man only four month later. But then he say God is father and he is son and he is spirit. That sound like he breed himself to get himself, then kill himself. White man God perplexing like the white man.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Every time you open this you get free. Freeness up in here and nobody even have to know you get free but you.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Homer whiter than plenty white man, it seem. But nothing make a nigger more black than whip scars. Lilith don’t want none of it.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Something else that her mind answer before the question ask. She know the answer. She can’t help nobody out of white man power, not even herself. The woman eye still asking. Lilith don’t know how to fix her eye to say no, so she look at the man and the same question come over him face.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“see how the white womens goin’ look and hear how white womens laugh in the colonies. She think of white flesh and black flesh, that really be brown flesh by blood and the two flesh melt into one flesh that don’t know colour. Then Lilith wonder if she dreaming because dreaming is one thing God never allow negro to do.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“White man is white man is white man, but not every nigger be the same nigger.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Fuckin’ was like talking to God and hearing an answer.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Truth be told, slaves in Jamaica have more ranking among themself than massa. In this place two thing matter more than most, how dark a nigger you be and where the white man choose to put you. One have all to do with the other. From highest to lowest, this be how things go. The number one prime nigger who would never get sell is the head of the house slaves. That position so hoity-toity that in some house is a white woman who be that nigger. The head house nigger get charge with so much that she downright run the house, and everybody including the massa do what she say. Homer careful not to cross the line, though. Position can make a negro girl forget herself and there is always the cowhide, the cat-o’-nine and the buckshot to remind her of her place. After she, there be the house slaves who work the rooms and the grounds and the gardens. Sometimes is the prime pretty niggers or the mulatto, quadroon or mustee that work there. Then you have the cooks who the backra trust the most, because the cook know that if the mistress get sick after a meal there goin’ be a whipping or a hanging before the cock even crow. Other house slaves be cleaning and dusting and shining and manservanting and womanservanting and taking care of backra pickneys. After the house slaves come the artisan niggermens, like the blacksmith, the bricklayer, the tanner, the silversmith, niggers who skilled with they hands, followed by the stable boys, coachmen and carters. Next is the field niggers, headed by the Johnny-jumpers who be the right hand and left hand of the slave-drivers. They do most of the whipping and kicking but when the estate running right they have nothing to do, so they whip and kick harder. After Johnny-jumper come the Great Slave Gang, the most expensive slaves, the one who they buy for the long years of hard work. The mens and the womens strapping and handsome like a prime horse. Most be Ashanti, what the white man call Coromantee, but they not easy to control so they get punish plenty for they spiritedness. But a dead Coromantee man can set an estate back up to three hundred pounds so they careful not to kill too much. After that is the Petit Gang, the makeup of plain common nigger. Some cost less than one hundred pounds and they work the other fields, like the ratoon or the tobacco that some planters grown on the side. Other nigger look down ’pon them mens as worthless and them womens as good for rutting, not breeding. On some estate even the pickneys work, mostly in the trash gang to pick up rubbish on the estate or to carry water for the field slaves to drink, or to get firewood. That be the negroes.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Lilith have a quilt on her back, but there be a bigger quilt, a patchwork of negro bones that reach from the Africa to the West Indies.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“I goin’ call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Homer porge il libro a Lilith e lei lo prende fra le dita. Lilith si aspetta che sia come un vestito o un portagioielli, facile a rompersi come qualsiasi cosa dei backra. Il libro è duro e morbido al tempo stesso, la copertina su cui fa scorrere le dita sembra lino al tatto, o tela grezza, ma il libro è anche duro come il legno e spesso. Il libro è rosso come il vino o il sangue. Lei non ha mai, mai toccato né annusato niente di simile. Un effluvio come d'olio, o forse di ascelle di uomo bianco, o di polvere e qualcos'altro, tutte cose che separate hanno un odore orribile ma insieme creano la più meravigliosa delle miscele. Lilith chiude gli occhi e fiuta quell'odore come fosse tabacco.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“—Little pussy like me still have bigger cock than the two of them, she say. She pull the gag out of Sacco mouth. —What you gonna do, Miss”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women