John Crow's Devil Quotes

“Drunkenness was a communal and personal pleasure at once, a miserable state only to those not drinking. Sobriety to him was a cruel attack of conscience masking itself as awareness. If sober people were so aware, how come they only spoke truth when drunk? Give him the romance of a drunkard over the indignation of a teetotaler any day.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“He was the only one doing the eating, so she must have been doing the watching. Women loved to watch men eat, he thought. It was the last blast of primal energy that the hunter-gatherer had left to show.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“Your light blacker than black. I know you.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“The Apostle’s robes billowed even though there was no wind. Pastor Bligh’s robes were white and purple. Lavender and bleach. Detergent and antiseptic. The Apostle’s black and red robes blew with flesh and blood, terror and magnificence.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“Day was for discipline; night, chaos. Day was for white gloves and skirts below the knee, night was for goat blood on black skin. Day was for stiff lips and Bible verse; night was for an orgy of one with a green banana as her incubus.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“He was not a dark man, but not light either. His color was a nebulous thing, so like his voice, which was too low to be weak but too reedy to be commanding. In a town that preferred things black or white, grayness such as his was not welcome.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“He was spiraling downward and would have taken the village with him were it not for the other, who lead them instead to a light blacker than the thickest darkness.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“Dust hid blood, but not remembrance.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil

“People would say that if the Rum Preacher was all that stood between Heaven and Hell, then everybody had better stock up on asbestos.”
― Marlon James, John Crow's Devil