412 Quotes by Colson Whitehead

From the trunk of their scheme, choices and decisions sprouted like branches and shoots.

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to.

Elwood said, "It's against the law." State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.

Cora blamed the people who wrote it down. People always got things wrong, on purpose as much as by accident.

I would represent my country, the Republic of Anhedonia. We have no borders, but the population teems. No one has deigned to write down our history, but we are an ancient land, founded during the original disappointments, when the first person met another person.

I contain multitudes, most of them flawed.

The encyclopedias are empty. There are people who trick you and deliver emptiness with a smile, while others rob you of your self-respect. You need to remember who you are.

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.

Keep on the path and you will not see the ruined people, so do not stray from the path.