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Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day.
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Colson Whitehead |
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The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester house, whose girls had a saturnine disposition in his opinion, as if imported from Maine or other gloom-loving provinces.
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sadness
maine
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Colson Whitehead |
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e843e2a
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In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
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Colson Whitehead |
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Georgina hailed from Delaware and had that vexing way of Delaware ladies, delighting in puzzles.
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Colson Whitehead |
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2097689
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But if he didn't read, he was a slave.
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Colson Whitehead |
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7f8343f
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Why not remove his desk, bring in a treadmill, hang a carrot from the ceiling and stop all pretense already.
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Colson Whitehead |
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She wondered where he escaped from, how bad it was, and how far he traveled before he put it behind him.
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Colson Whitehead |
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That's how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can't control it, they destroy it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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a45c1a3
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Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.
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Colson Whitehead |
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82831c2
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Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The pla..
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Colson Whitehead |
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25a6adb
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prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription--the American imperative.
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Colson Whitehead |
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4d129a6
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Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren't looking, alluring and ever out of reach. The
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Colson Whitehead |
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b57a8ce
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another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e413a2c
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To preempt rejection she dresses to exaggerate her difference when the true enemy is not the world's disdain but its indifference. He is surely the next item in a dreary procession and cannot be seen for all those previous disappointments.
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Colson Whitehead |
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The whip was the standard punishment for disobedience. Running away was a transgression so large that the punishment enveloped every generous soul on her brief tour of freedom.
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Colson Whitehead |
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And on the plantations, the overseers preserved the names of workers in rows of tight cursive, every name an asset, breathing capital, profit made flesh.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e1b9c78
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The peculiar institution made Cora into a maker of lists as well. In her inventory of loss, people were not reduced to sums, but multiplied by their kindnesses.
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Colson Whitehead |
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d7013cc
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He embraced the runaways with desperate affection. Cora couldn't help but shrink away. Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom?
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Colson Whitehead |
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Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom? Caesar
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Colson Whitehead |
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sometimes good fortune is just having fewer messed-up things happening to you.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e7631a6
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The moon grew fat and thin, there were solstices, first frosts and spring rains. All these things proceeded without the interference of men. She tried to imagine what the tide looked like, coming in and going out, nipping at the sand like a little dog, heedless of people and their machinations. Her strength returned.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e9c70c7
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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.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8b25f11
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The old woman had destroyed his family so thoroughly it couldn't have been accidental. It wasn't her niece's greed--the old woman had played a trick on them the whole time.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e6836b7
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Stubborn breaks when it don't bend,
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Colson Whitehead |
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0406ff9
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Maybe everything the slave catcher said was true, Cora thought, every justification, and the sons of Ham were cursed and the slave master performed the Lord's will. And maybe he was just a man talking to an outhouse door, waiting for someone to wipe her ass. --
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Colson Whitehead |
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c9aa83c
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it was time to get out of what Coach called "small-stack mentality." I no longer had to play like I was trying to escape the space station before it self-destructed, as the chirpy computer voice counted down."
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Colson Whitehead |
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e4fd048
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the children make of it what they can. What they don't understand today, they might tomorrow. "The Declaration is like a map. You trust that it's right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself."
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Colson Whitehead |
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18688a5
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She said that white towns had simply banded together to rid themselves of the black stronghold in their midst. That is how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can't control it, they destroy it. If
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Colson Whitehead |
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52254b7
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justice may be slow and invisible, but it always renders its true verdict in the end.
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Colson Whitehead |
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6117200
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Here's one delusion: that we can escape slavery. We can't. Its scars will never fade.
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Colson Whitehead |
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74f198e
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We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together." --"
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Colson Whitehead |
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The conflict in Europe was terrible and violent, she told her sailor, but she took exception to the name. The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be. Cora
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Colson Whitehead |
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3e6b21a
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Women and animals, you only have to break them in once, he said. They stay broke. All
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Colson Whitehead |
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e7cd347
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The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse. Mabel
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Colson Whitehead |
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Who are you after you finish something this magnificent--in constructing it you have also journeyed through it, to the other side.
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Colson Whitehead |
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But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her troubles on herself?
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Colson Whitehead |
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accomplice," Ridgeway said. "Caesar. Did it make" --
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Colson Whitehead |
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And that great mixture was brought to America in the holds of slave ships. To the north, the south. Their sons and daughters picked tobacco, cultivated cotton, worked on the largest estates and smallest farms. We are craftsmen and midwives and preachers and peddlers. Black hands built the White House, the seat of our nation's government. The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, b..
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Colson Whitehead |
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7d004c1
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The whites got what they deserved. For enslaving her people, for massacring another race, for stealing the very land itself. Let them burn by flame or fever, let the destruction started here rove acre by acre until the dead have been avenged.
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Colson Whitehead |
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117abc2
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brown hair, pebbly eyes dark beneath his straw hat, drove a team of workhorses from the west. His cheeks were sunburned
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Colson Whitehead |
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0e6b995
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in for the evening. The town rose into view, the biggest Cora had seen since North Carolina, if not as long established. The long main street, with its two banks and the loud row of taverns, was enough to bring her back to the days of the dormitory. The town gave no indication of quieting for the night, shops open, citizens a-prowl on the wooden sidewalks. Boseman was adamant about not spending the night. If the
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Colson Whitehead |
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7ff9fff
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its terms? Homer watched her as she dressed, like a valet who had waited on her since the cradle. "I'm caught," Cora said. "You choose to be with him." Homer looked puzzled. He took out his notebook, turned to the last page, and scribbled."
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Colson Whitehead |
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2c183e0
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rare frost that morning, the wind howling
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Colson Whitehead |
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73e9a53
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to the empty space usually reserved for Valentine.
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Colson Whitehead |