Marlon James

I come from a very big family from every economic background. Some of the streets I talk about, I've actually walked on because I have family from there. Jamaica has so many contradictions.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

I'd spent seven years in an all-boys school: 2,000 adolescents in the same khaki uniforms striking hunting poses, stalking lunchrooms, classrooms, changing rooms, looking for boys who didn't fit in.

I'm not a writer on a mission, and I'm very suspicious of writers on missions, but I'm also not living a false life.

Because homophobia is still largely driven by the church, it's legitimised. It's also tied to sexism, because those two are never far apart.

As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator.

I'm happy to not know what I think about stuff; I'm happy to change my mind. But it's relatively recently that I've been able to apply that to feelings. I used to like to know what I felt. I didn't want those feelings to be complicated or muddled or clashing.

What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings.

If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince.

The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.

Pretty much everything I've written is a mix of excitement and fear.

I was the nerd. Because I was reading. I wasn't into sports. I was really into art. Very geekish about comics. Assumed gay.

I grew up with reggae. Reggae is like family. I know it, and there's a type of love and familiarity, but sometimes you want to hang out with other people.

I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.

If your depiction of loss doesn't make the reader feel loss, then you didn't depict it right.

Caribbean literature only has to be true to itself. It doesn't need colonialism or imperialism. It's always been vibrant.

We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible.

At 28 years old, seven years out of college, I was so convinced that my voice outed me as a fag that I had stopped speaking to people I didn't know.

'The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring.

In 1976, Rastafarians were one of the most violated, persecuted groups in Jamaica. They could be beaten within an inch of their lives, or detained for two years, just for being found in a 'proper' neighbourhood.

There was never a single murder in my neighbourhood; there was barely a robbery. It was so suburban, it was almost disappointing.

My first novel, 'John Crow's Devil,' freed me up to write about the past, and 'The Book of Night Women' freed me up to have a book totally based on voice and being very spontaneous.

Some of the craziest aspects about 'Weeper' were the things I found out to be true. I mean, true of people.

I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.