Quotes from Colson Whitehead

To see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own—such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be any moment. If your eyes met, both parties looked away. But this man did not. He nodded before passersby took him from

Georgina hailed from Delaware and had that vexing way of Delaware ladies, delighting in puzzles.

love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change.

Con el tiempo les fueron quitando a palos las palabras del otro lado del océano. Por simplificar, por borrarles la identidad, por sofocar revueltas.

His cousin Freddy brought him in on the heist one hot night in early June. It was such a pretty block and on certain nights when it was cool and quiet it was as if you didn't live in the city at all.

No matter that Mr. Marconi had told him he didn't care, no matter that Elwood had never said a word to his friends when they stole in his presence. It didn't make no sense until it made the only sense.

Och att de sedan, efter allt världen hade lärt dem, inte kände igen bojorna när de fästes vid deras händer och fötter. South Carolinas bojor var av ett nytt slag – nycklarna och tillhållarna präglades av lokala syften – men fungerade ändå som bojor. De hade inta alls kommit särskilt långt.

Miss Lucy recoiled from the comparison. If you can't see the difference between good, upstanding people and the mentally disturbed, with criminals and imbeciles, you're not the person I thought you were. I'm not the person you thought I was.

Time enough for Cora to take stock of her journey from Randall and make a thick braid of her misfortunes.

eccentric" being a word, Lila Mae notes dryly, that white people use to describe crazy white people of stature)

a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness. The people she chose, young and old, from the rich part of town or the more modest streets, did not individually persecute Cora. As a community, they were shackles. If she kept at it, chipping away at weak links wherever she found them, it might add up to something.

EVER since she saw a woodcut of a missionary surrounded by jungle natives, Ethel thought it would be spiritually fulfilling to serve the Lord in dark Africa, delivering savages to the light.

Pick your fights like you pick your nose: with complete awareness of where you are.

You never see a fat ventriloquist. Pepper was of the mind that this reflected the parasitic nature of the relationship, wherein the puppet leeches the life essence of the puppeteer. Which gave him an idea for a diet craze: the mass adoption of puppet sidekicks. Send the price of lumber through the roof. From time to time his mind turned to business ventures.

Maybe everything the slave catcher said was true, Cora thought, every justification, and the sons of Ham were cursed and the slave master performed the Lord's will. And maybe he was just a man talking to an outhouse door, waiting for someone to wipe her ass.

In the dank utility room deep in the subbasements of my personality, a little man wiped his hands on his overalls and pulled the switch: More.

What's wrong with Disneyland? It brings joy to millions and tutors children about the corporate, overbranded world they've been born into.

Att se bojor på en annan människa och vara glad att de inte är ens egna – sådan var den lycka som stod färgade till buds, de som definierades av hur mycket värre det närsomhelst kunde blir.

It was the sound of the god of death from one of the forgotten religions, the one that got it right, upstaging the pretenders with their billions of duped faithful. Every god ever manufactured by the light of cave fires to explain the thunder or calling forth the fashionable supplications in far-flung temples was the wrong one. He had come around after all this time, preening as he toured the necropolis, his kingdom risen at last.

Liberty make a body fertile," Georgina said. That, and the knowledge they will not be sold, Cora added.

The officer of the court was a good old boy with a meaty backwoods beard and a hungover wobble to his step. He'd outgrown his shirt and the pressure against the buttons made him look upholstered.

In her Georgia misery she had pictured freedom, and it had not looked like this. Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare. Mingo

Roger Tipple did not have a weak chin so much as a very aggressive neck.

Every kid had heard of Fun Town, been there or envied someone who had. In the third cut on side A, Dr. King spoke of how his daughter longed to visit the amusement park on Stewart Avenue in Atlanta. Yolanda begged her parents whenever