Colson Whitehead Quotes

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy...

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, u...

it means what it say," Ethel said. "It means that a Hebrew may not enslave a Hebrew. But the sons of...

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bo...

my father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit," Ridgeway said. "All these years late, I pre...

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The v...

Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many ti...

That is how the European tribes operate, she said, If they can't control it, they destroy it.

Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties, he said.

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up cl...

But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it...The ...

Resentment was the hinge of her personality.

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all...

The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the effici...

The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester ...

Cora blamed the people who wrote it down. People always got things wrong, on purpose as much as by a...

The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this grea...

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with bl...

New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.

Versifying left her cold. Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for ...

The whites were right to be afraid. One day the system would collapse in blood. An insurrection of o...

The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another count...

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was suppo...

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business wh...

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for exam...

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.

Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; th...

Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last...

The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.

Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the...

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the b...

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of ...

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some ...

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of ...

You should have gone yourself, you ask for a Coke and they come back with orange drink. No one under...

Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on t...

He imagined a town called A. Around the communal fire they’re shaping arrowheads and carving tribute...

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Bet...

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place ...

Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. ...

I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've sp...

I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you.

Most people say, “Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their wo...

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

An elevator doesn’t exist without its freight. If there’s no one to get on, the elevator remains in ...

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing i...

A slow hour passed, distracted by intermittent drops of moisture from above, as if the sky were cond...

Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to ...

Here's a tip for new parents: Start lowering those expectations early, it's going to pay off later.

There was one moment of intersection, when the topic of hate-watching came up. "Why do you watch TV ...

Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). ...

They don't give gold bracelets for regrets.

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. "Life is ...

see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own--such was the good fortune permitted ...

From the trunk of their scheme, choices and decisions sprouted like branches and shoots.

Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described any...

Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets mea...