412 Quotes by Colson Whitehead

She is alone with an unattended desk light whose electricity is an expenditure waiting to be itemized and eliminated in the next budget of Lift magazine, Covering the Elevator Industry for Thirty Years.

Take it out on each other if you cannot take it out on the ones who deserve it.

It didn’t make no sense until it made the only sense.

But who can resist the seductions of elevators these days, those stepping stones to Heaven, which make relentless verticality so alluring?

I like movies. I’ve written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I’ll work for a couple months on this idea that’s been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I’ll just go try a novel because it’s a lot easier. That’s what I know. So why am I killing myself?

That’s true,” Turner said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t see how it works. Maybe I see things more clearly because of it.” He made a face as the soap powder gave him a kick. “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there – you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course. If you want to walk out of here.

All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn’t matter – expectation was such an innovative concept to him that he couldn’t help but be a bit moved by what they were saying. Whatever that was.

I 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.

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 dragged.