Colson Whitehead Quotes

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway?

~ Colson Whitehead

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.

~ Colson Whitehead

A slow hour passed, distracted by intermittent drops of moisture from above, as if the sky were conducting a feasibility study on the implications of rain. Of committing to a course of action.

~ Colson Whitehead

Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on the package, you were golden. Those words on the package promise ease from metropolitan care, modern worries. And out here, if you opened things up, underneath the cellophane, what did you find inside? That fruit has splendid packaging, it has solid consumer awareness and is an animal favorite. Its seeds will be deposited in spoor miles away and its market dominance will increase. Splendid and beautiful petals are great advertising--the insects buzz and hop from all points every weekend to hit this flower-bed mall. Natural selection was market forces. In business, in the woods: what is necessary to the world will last.

~ Colson Whitehead

Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties, he said.

~ Colson Whitehead

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd take an interest.

~ Colson Whitehead

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

~ Colson Whitehead

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

~ Colson Whitehead

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.

~ Colson Whitehead

New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.

~ Colson Whitehead

Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers for your reinventions.

~ Colson Whitehead

The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.

~ Colson Whitehead

As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.

~ Colson Whitehead

Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.

~ Colson Whitehead

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

~ Colson Whitehead

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.

~ Colson Whitehead

Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; they were umbrella salesmen standing outside a subway entrance in a downpour. The human race deserved the plague, we brought it on ourselves for poisoning the planet, for the Death of God, the calculated brutalities of the global economic system, for driving primordial species to extinction: the entire collapse of values as evidenced by everything from nuclear fission to reality television to alternate side of the street parking. Mark Spitz could only endure these harangues for a minute or two before he split. It was boring.The plague was the plague. You were wearing galoshes, or you weren't.

~ Colson Whitehead

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

~ Colson Whitehead

Most people say, “Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.

~ Colson Whitehead

Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the local megamall’s discount- appliance emporium.

~ Colson Whitehead