Quotes from Mat Johnson

You've got to admit, slick, you got a skill for avoiding the devil." "That just means that now the devils out there, looking for me...and that devil is very mad.

TEKELI-LI. Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li. I got that from Pym. I got that from Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, specifically. Pym that is maddening, Pym that is brilliance, Pym whose failures entice instead of repel. Pym that flows and ignites and Pym that becomes so entrenched it stagnates for hundreds of words at a time. A book that at points makes no sense, gets wrong both history and science, and yet stumbles into an emotional truth greater than both.

And that's the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people's actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In

she loves everyone else here enough that she is willing to let them see all of who she is in this moment.

Okay, here's the secret. It's not really a secret, but I'll frame it to you as one. The same people who despise you for identifying as mixed? Those are the same people who, when you do identify as black, despise you for not being black enough. And there's nothing you can actually do to be black enough, for them. Because it's not really how you act that they despise. It's you. Your very existence." She

I'm watching you, big boy, my eyes say, but his are closed so it's an optical monologue.

You gotta change. With life. Life changes, you got to go with it. Or you get pulled apart." I

The fear comes back but I don't listen to it. I decide the fear itself is nothing of merit, a few little chemicals in my brain, dripping the wrong way. I walk right over and if I must I will walk right through.

In my head, I was getting "gangsta," which I've always felt showed greater intent than getting "gangster" in that it expresses a willful unlawfulness even upon its own linguistic representation.

The Antarctic gives the impression of being white, but really it's blue. Almost entirely constructed of that pale, powder blue that at times can darken to rich, cobalt haze, as it did now around me. (96)

In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father's house... Its expansive lawn is utterly useless, wild like it smokes its own grass and dreams of being a jungle.

It's foolish and a desperate plan, but I accept that I am a foolish and desperate individual, so it's perfect.