412 Quotes by Colson Whitehead

He was a mote cycling in the wheels of a giant clock. Millions of people tended to this magnificent contraption, they lived and sweated and toiled in it, serving the mechanism of metropolis and making it bigger, better, story by glorious story and idea by unlikely idea. How small he was, tumbling between the teeth.

Who are you after you finish something this magnificent – in constructing it you have also journeyed through it, to the other side. On one end there was who you were before you went underground, and on the other end a new person steps out into the light. The up-top world must be so ordinary compared to the miracle beneath, the miracle you made with your sweat and blood. The secret triumph you keep in your heart.

Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else’s good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person’s hell.

The farm’s carpenters were true artisans – they had to be to keep all those book from jumping off the shelves, so many wonders did they contain.

But now that I been out and I been brought back, I nkow there’s nothing in here that changes people. In here and out there are the same, but in here no one has to act fake anymore.

Cora adored the old almanacs for containing the entire world.

Tipple sold his success much more effectively than he did. How to get excited about, take pride in something that came so naturally? It was like being honored for breathing.

It was the day after Sam’s house collapsed, though she couldn’t be sure. Best to measure time now with one of the Randall plantation’s cotton scales, her hunger and fear piling on one side while her hopes were removed from the other in increments. The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.

Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom? Caesar.