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Quotes from Marlon James’ ‘Black Leopard, Red Wolf’

Tracker is a hunter, known throughout the thirteen kingdoms as one who has a nose – and he always works alone. But he breaks his own rule when, hired to find a lost child, he finds himself part of a group of hunters all searching for the same boy.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James weaves a tapestry of breathtaking adventure though a world at once ancient and startlingly modern.

From his book are these seven quotes to give you an essence of the book.


Bi oju ri enu a pamo.

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

~

“Life is love and I have no love left. Love has drained itself from me, and run to a river like this one.”

~

“You ever see a man who doesn’t know he’s unhappy, Leopard? Look for it in the scars on his woman’s face. Or in the excellence of his woodcraft and iron making, or in the masks he makes to wear himself because he forbids the world to see his own face. I am not happy, Leopard. But I am not unhappy that I know.”

~

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

~

“Truth is truth and nothing you can do about it even if you hide it, or kill it, or even tell it. It was truth before you open your mouth and say, That there is a true thing.”

~

“When kings fall they fall on top of us.”

~

“I am content with much. This world never gives me anything, and yet I have everything I want.”


Against the exhilarating backdrop of magic and violence, Marlon James explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all. Get a copy of Black Leopard, Red Wolf here!

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