Quotes from Colson Whitehead

Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams. In

The white man in the book, Gulliver, roved from peril to peril, each new island a new predicament to solve before he could return home. That was the man's real trouble, not the savage and uncanny civilizations he encountered—he kept forgetting what he had. That was white people all over: Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep straying.

High-minded idiocy pitted against the power of coin.

The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings.

He stopped watching the movie a few years later when he realized he didn't watch it because it was sort of corny, or they got the facts wrong, or it marked how far he had come, but because watching it made him sad, and a nutjob part of him sought out that sadness.

But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her troubles on herself?

Money was new and unpredictable and liked to go where it pleased.

You're supposed to pass on something useful to your children.

Also, Archimedes, one of his first encyclopedia finds. Violence is the only lever big enough to move the world.

prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—the American imperative.

Cora had become too accustomed to escaping unscathed from encounters with white authority.

Stolen bodies working stolen land.

True, you couldn't treat an Irishman like an African, white nigger or no.

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that's what you do when you take away someone's babies--steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better.

Maynard Spencer was a white man in his late fifties, bits of silver in his cropped black hair. A real "crack of dawner," as Harriet used to say, who moved with a deliberate air, as if he rehearsed everything in front of a mirror.

the shadow of the master, the reminder that

She was a survivor but the world took her in bites.

If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America.

In effect, they abolished slavery. On the contrary, Oney Garrison said in response. We abolished niggers.

She didn't agree with the popular arguments for slavery but saw it as a necessary evil given the obvious intellectual deficiencies of the African tribe. To free them from bondage all at once would be disastrous—how would they manage their affairs without a careful and patient eye to guide them?

When he heard autumn leaves skuttling in the wind, he remembered that chuckle.

He had a narrow raccoon face that drew Elwood's attention to his tiny nose and dark circles under his eyes and thick bristly eyebrows. Spencer was fastidious with his dark blue Nickel uniform; every crease in his clothes looked sharp enough to cut, as if he were a living blade.

Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren't looking, alluring and ever out of reach. The

The boys knew to hide their enthusiasm over little kid things that still had an allure.