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Top Colson Whitehead Quotes

Browse top 38 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Colson Whitehead.

Favorite Colson Whitehead Quotes

1. "They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A's and the C's tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape." ~ Colson Whitehead
2. "His legs remembered the correct position for squatting down with toys. He played. He fit the round male studs into the round female grooves. He got some thinking done as he hunkered down on his fallen-sleep legs." ~ Colson Whitehead
3. "Later he decided the specifics were not important, that the true lesson of accidents is not the how or the why, but the taken-for-granted world they exile you from." ~ Colson Whitehead
4. "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." ~ Colson Whitehead
5. "What does the perfect elevator look like, the one that will deliver us from the cities we suffer now, these stunted shacks? We don't know because we can't see inside it, it's something we cannot imagine, like the shape of angels' teeth. It's a black box." ~ Colson Whitehead
6. "...and for the second time that day he blesses the certainty of airports because he can always turn around and go someplace else." ~ Colson Whitehead
7. "She recognizes the cramped handwriting, the internecine, slashing script. She has studied it under the gaze of the Institute Librarian, in locked rooms -- she even, in the early, giddy days of her conversion, practiced Fulton's handwriting for hours. Knows the ink. . . . Here it is now, on the familiar notebook paper Fulton preferred. She tracked down the manufacturer once; they have a plant across the river where they still turn out the Fontaine line." ~ Colson Whitehead
8. "In his mind, the business of existence was about minimizing consequences. The plague had raised the stakes, but he had been in training for this his whole life." ~ Colson Whitehead
9. "But it's like riding a bike. A hell-bike, made out of hell." ~ Colson Whitehead
10. "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
11. "Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble fund it themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel no so terrible about my various emotional issues." ~ Colson Whitehead
12. "Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time." ~ Colson Whitehead
13. "Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?" ~ Colson Whitehead
14. "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
15. "A monster is a person who has stopped pretending." ~ Colson Whitehead
16. "I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I'll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children." ~ Colson Whitehead
17. "He told himself: Hope is a gateway drug, don't do it." ~ Colson Whitehead
18. "In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be." ~ Colson Whitehead
19. "We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them." ~ Colson Whitehead
20. "As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless." ~ Colson Whitehead
21. "Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last Night story. You knew the answer. The plague had a knack for narrative closure." ~ Colson Whitehead
22. "The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged." ~ Colson Whitehead
23. "Isn't it great when you're a kid and the world is full of anonymous things? Everything is bright and mysterious until you know what it is called and then all the light goes out of it...Once we knew the name of it, how could we ever come to love it?...For things had true natures, and they hid behind false names, beneath the skin we gave them." ~ Colson Whitehead
24. "It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it." ~ Colson Whitehead
25. "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
26. "Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed." ~ Colson Whitehead
27. "There were plenty of things in the world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked." ~ Colson Whitehead
28. "Their lives had been an interminable loop of repeated gestures; now their existences were winnowed to this discrete and eternal moment." ~ Colson Whitehead
29. "He was a mediocre man. He had led a mediocre life exceptional only in the magnitude of its unexceptionality. Now the world was mediocre, rendering him perfect. He asked himself: How can I die? I was always like this. Now I am more me. He had the ammo. He took them all down." ~ Colson Whitehead
30. "What isn't said is as important as what is said." ~ Colson Whitehead
31. "You can't rush inspiration." ~ Colson Whitehead
32. "A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working." ~ Colson Whitehead
33. "Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book." ~ Colson Whitehead
34. "Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel." ~ Colson Whitehead
35. "I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French." ~ Colson Whitehead
36. "There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can." ~ Colson Whitehead
37. "A society manufactures the heroes it requires." ~ Colson Whitehead
38. "I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside." ~ Colson Whitehead

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Today's Quote

Fue uno de esos momentos en que querrías ayudar, pero no sabes cómo. Se te vienen a la cabeza un millón de cosas que querrías decir, pero no las dices porque temes no ser la persona más indicada para hacerlo. Yo sabía que era la última persona en el mundo que podría hablar con ella, pero a tomar por saco la ética, lo dije de todos modos. - Oye, puede que no sea un experto en lo que sea que te está pasando, pero tiene que haber una forma mejor de lidiar con ello que hacerte daño a ti misma."
Author: Chris Colfer

What Did Colson Whitehead Talk About?

Ear
Thin
Hey
Per
Ten
End
King
Ours
Wit
Act
Use
Ring
Ways
Here
Hen
Tan
Exist
Cause
Existence
Con
Sin
Los
Lit
Less
Bee
Fact
Boo
Son
Ape
Side
Ally
Self
Came
Era
Early
Keep
Book
Lie
Moment
Days
Plan
Round

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