Quotes by Colson Whitehead

“The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well ...”

“Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.”

“my father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit," Ridgeway said. "All these years late, I prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and bui...”

“The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the cri...”

“If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this ne...”

“The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.”

“In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox ...”

“You should have gone yourself, you ask for a Coke and they come back with orange drink. No one understands the martyrdom of the volunteers for the trip to food concession.”

“An elevator doesnt exist without its freight. If theres no one to get on, the elevator remains in quiescence. The elevator and the passenger need each other.”

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

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

“There was one moment of intersection, when the topic of hate-watching came up. "Why do you watch TV shows--and keep watching them--if you don't like them?" Terrence asked.Simple: Some days, all you...”

“There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.”

“They don't give gold bracelets for regrets.”

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

“Resentment was the hinge of her personality.”

“Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. Lila Mae removed the two suitcases from the back of the pickup truck. The suitcases were new, wit...”

“He imagined a town called A. Around the communal fire theyre shaping arrowheads and carving tributes o the god of the hunt. One day some guys with spears come over the ridge, perform all kinds of m...”

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

“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.”