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29d0fc2
|
We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.
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people
perception
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Colson Whitehead |
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8278c6b
|
And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.
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war
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
usa
delusions
united-states
cruelty
race-relations
theft
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
388cfcf
|
Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.
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slavery
white-people
dignity
race-relations
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
327b45e
|
Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.
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racism
slavery
native-american-genocide
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
f57bfb8
|
The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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7720095
|
The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse.
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Colson Whitehead |
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c232494
|
You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they..
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loss
individuality
memories
change
mom-and-pop-stores
retail
modern-society
transience
neighborhoods
new-york-city
consumerism
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
ce09a0e
|
Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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6f041c9
|
Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren't looking, alluring and ever out of reach.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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a040ef1
|
It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.
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perfection
evolutionre
improvement
|
Colson Whitehead |
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e4d787d
|
If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.
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|
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
white-people
possessions
native-americans
usa
united-states
ownership
race-relations
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
5a7976d
|
If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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388dcb3
|
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.
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world
life
plans
guns
ideas
weapons
safety
protection
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
ea78e8a
|
She wasn't surprised when his character revealed itself--if you waited long enough, it always did. Like the dawn.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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2beccb5
|
A plantation was a plantation; one might think one's misfortunes distinct, but the true horror lay in their universality.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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d18ce88
|
A society manufactures the heroes it requires.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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0a9a68d
|
Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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de1f138
|
Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
c95940b
|
Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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ac992c5
|
The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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e7f08e0
|
Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.
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|
pain
sadness
medication
drugs
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
bd52155
|
Best to let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things. That was where they were now. The world wasn't ending: it had ended and now they were in the new place. They could not recognize it because they had never seen it before.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
f712cad
|
Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
4c29e3d
|
There was an order of misery, misery tucked inside miseries, and you were meant to keep track.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
4c36f61
|
Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
188ec09
|
New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
0660beb
|
But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it... The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the Freeman had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others. Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an ang..
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|
slavery
freedom
native-american
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
4bcbedc
|
There were plenty of things in the world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
bccd13b
|
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.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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c55de70
|
The almanac had a strange, soapy smell and made a cracking noise like fire as she turned the pages. She'd never been the first person to open a book.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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edd7bb5
|
Everyone was fucked up in their own way; as before, it was a mark of one's individuality.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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8b55232
|
You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
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0bbc1e4
|
He told himself: Hope is a gateway drug, don't do it.
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
8ce372e
|
The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
|
|
slavery
slave-catchers
us
united-states-of-america
jobs
usa
united-states
criminals
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
43ce7d5
|
Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
eef06cb
|
But we have all been branded even if you can't see it, inside if not without
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
87218ef
|
The park sustained them, the green harbor they preserved as the town extended itself outward, block by block and house by house. Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was - a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The ..
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|
Colson Whitehead |
|
116fadf
|
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.
|
|
grief
humour
stories
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
046831c
|
The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always - the overseer's cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude..
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
3e21634
|
It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables--this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
4dfdbcc
|
As the years pass, Valentine observed, racial violence only becomes more vicious in its expression. It will not abate or disappear, not anytime soon, and not in the south.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
8d37ecb
|
He told her that every one of her enemies, all the masters and overseers of her suffering, would be punished, if not in this world then the next, for justice may be slow and invisible, but it always renders its true verdict in the end.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
130cd21
|
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.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
23e27d7
|
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.
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|
|
Colson Whitehead |