A woman on American TV explains how the real plague hitting most of the country is loneliness and that such people have a 32 percent higher risk of dying early. But the opposite of loneliness is not company, and you have to be in it to recognise this.
M. James, The Disappearers (2026), 600
Dickens very much likes to show us as puppets in life's grand theatre, but he rarely shows us the strings or who's pulling them. Oh, the poverty, what a tragedy! Oh, the workhouses, what a disgrace! Well, somebody put the children in them, Charlie. Trollope, on the other hand, starts with politics and works his way down to show how it infects everything. Put another way: Trollope knows how life works. Maybe you needed to come from the colonies where you never grew up with the luxury of separating politics from everything. But how's this for irony: he despised Jamaica.
M. James, The Disappearers (2026), 475
Sometimes I wish I could feel that shit just once, you know? What it feels to take just one part of my life for granted, even if it’s just a fucking breath, man. Even if it’s just a fucking breath. Because this place, these people just look at you and decide that you don’t deserve to fucking exhale. Then they go around saying stupid shit like we choose this lifestyle and I don't know which of these two words is stupider. Veganism is a fucking lifestyle. And who the fuck would choose to have a tire thrown over their neck and be set on fire?
M. James, The Disappearers (2026), 217Kill a man with a high voice. Kill a man who float when he walk. Kill a fish. Kill Boy George. Kill Rock Hudson. Kill a man in short-shorts. Kill a man with no girlfriend. Kill George Michael. Kill the other one. Kill a boy who get A+ on shit like poetry. Kill a poet. Kill a boy who say yes me dear. Kill them boys in the college bathroom. Kill all who wrist limp. Kill a man who sound like Miss Lou. Kill a man who bow down and lick the glamity. Kill the conductor who get catch in a car with another man. Steamy windows. Kill a man who defend battymanism while saying he not a battyman. Kill a man who touch your face. Kill a man who shower every day. Kill a man who hug too tight. Kill a man who shower every day. Kill a man before he spread AIDS.
M. James, The Disappearers (2026), 173
For the avoidance of doubt, I put this here as one of the - excellent - vocalisations of hate in Marlon James' book. I think it's a tour de force. I'm not supporting the sentiment.
So I stick on in the Church of England remembering that if the Reformation, as well as other influences, made a mess in a great many matters, there is plenty of mess also in Rome and the East. ... Stone believed the English mess, for all its muddle, at least did not claim to be anything other than provisional, and that this humble truthfulness was itself a Catholic virtue. Freedom from the dogmatic anathematisation of half of Christendom was something Stone valued enough to remain in his mother Church, for all its mess.
D. Stone, cited in T. Plant, 'Darwell Stone and Anglican identity: an appeal to the East', Sobornost 48:1 (2026), 31
King Lear it shall be, though the play is in itself inherently improbable and in parts excessively coarse and painful. But they may do it in modern clothes, or in the dark, or all standing on stepladders. You never know. King Lear it shall be.
A. Thirkell, High rising (1933), 177-8
