174 Quotes by Teju Cole

As he drank more and more, he became inebriated, and began to fashion damaged human beings.

To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.

And perhaps her escape was not from anything she had done, but from what she had seen. It was a speculation. I would never find out, for she possessed her secrets fully, as did those women that Vermeer painted in this same gray, lowland light; like theirs, her silence seemed absolute.

...originality is little morethan the fine blending of influences.

It wasn't a deception: all lovers live on partial knowledge.

I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood of the tables. It took so little to move the mood from one level to another, as one might push pieces on a chessboard. Even to be aware of this, in the midst of a happy moment, was to push one of those pieces, and to become slightly less happy.

We owe ourselves our lives.

Most of the people around me yesterday were middle-aged or old. I am used to it, but it never ceases to surprise me how easy it is to leave the hybridity of the city, and enter into all-white spaces, the homogeneity of which, as far as I can tell, causes no discomfort to the whites in them.

There was no starting point for the rebellion, but I could mark an arbitrary one: that a grown-up was someone who, first and foremost, could drink a Coke at whim.