30 Quotes by Mat Johnson

A man's daughter is his heart. Just with feet, walking out in the world.

The sociopaths – that’s the real problem. The whole street demeanor is about pretending to be a sociopath as well so that the real ones can’t find you.

A man’s daughter is his heart. Just with feet, walking out in the world.

I love the idea of biracial. I actually don’t use the word biracial. I tend to use mixed. Biracial to me accentuates the word race, and, you know, I don’t really care for it.

TEKELI-LI. Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li. I got that from Pym. I got that from Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, specifically. Pym that is maddening, Pym that is brilliance, Pym whose failures entice instead of repel. Pym that flows and ignites and Pym that becomes so entrenched it stagnates for hundreds of words at a time. A book that at points makes no sense, gets wrong both history and science, and yet stumbles into an emotional truth greater than both.

People aren’t social. They’re tribal. Race doesn’t exist, but tribes are real.

I look white to a lot of people. And I’m not. I’m African-American. I’m mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I’ve dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity.

For some reason, people always assign high cheekbones to some ethnicity, but apparently by their regards, everybody on earth has high cheekbones. So I don’t know if that matters.

I start with fear. It comes in so many forms. When I write, some of the fear goes away. So I write into the fear, and even more dissipates. I want to be scared while writing. I want to bring it to the surface so I can banish it.