Quotes from Colson Whitehead

Hey, man! Hey, hold up a minute! Like many New Yorkers, he had a crackhead alert system and turned, steeling himself.

A figment from tenth-grade science struck him: a Perpetual Misery Machine, one that operated by itself without human agency. Also, Archimedes, one of his first encyclopedia finds. Violence is the only lever big enough to move the world.

In time the saplings and hedges on the perimeter would provide shade and character; now they spoke of fine intentions.

Is this the truth of our historic encounter?

En tanke bredte sig i hende som en skygge: at denne station ikke var den første på linjen, men dens endestation. Jernbanen var ikke begyndt under huset her, men i den anden ende af det sorte hul. Som om der ikke var nogen steder i verden, man kunne flygte til, kun steder, man kunne flygte fra.

There had been no kidnapped boys swabbing the decks and earning pats on the head from white kidnappers.

America was a ghost in the darkness

No one really cares about other people when you get down to it—their own struggles are too close up.

As if something moved toward them, old and dark.

After a lull in white arrests, some towns increased the rewards for turning in collaborators. Folks informed on business rivals, ancient nemeses, and neighbors, recounting old conversations where the traitors had uttered forbidden sympathies. Children tattled on their parents, taught by schoolmistresses the hallmarks of sedition.

First came the stumps of the houses that had once contained the dreams of pioneers

She didn't see anyone she recognized; their faces had been transformed by fear.

agape as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there

The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be. Cora

She had never seen him rush or hurry. The man moved with exquisite calm, like a leaf drifting on the surface of a pond, making its own way on gentle currents.

Was it counterintuitive to apply lessons from a women's self-defense book to the World Series of Poker? Yes. But if modernity has taught us anything, it's that you don't fuck with Oprah.

Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing

The conflict in Europe was terrible and violent, she told her sailor, but she took exception to the name. The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be.

This city is reward for all it will enable you to achieve and punishment for all the crimes it will force you to commit.

The class focused on US history since the Civil War, but at every opportunity Mr. Hill guided them to the present, linking what had happened a hundred years ago to their current lives. They'd set off down one road at the beginning of class and it always led back to their doorsteps.

world. They didn't need people to say what they meant. The tables and facts couldn't be shaped into what they were not. The

Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue.

When you talk about this trip, and you will, because it was quite a journey and you witnessed many things, there were ups and downs, sudden reversals of fortune and last-minute escapes, it was really something, you will see your friends nod in recognition.

the con men never betray the game.