The whites were right to be afraid. One day the system would collapse in blood. An insurrection of one. She smiled for a moment, before the facts of her latest cell reasserted themselves. Scrabbling in the walls like a rat. Whether in the fields or underground or in an attic room America remained her warden.

— Colson Whitehead

The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race--which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wished for ourselves and our children?

— Colson Whitehead

They don't give gold bracelets for regrets.

— Colson Whitehead

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes, and we tracked it through our lives.

— Colson Whitehead

Versifying left her cold. 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.

— Colson Whitehead

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

— Colson Whitehead

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

Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?

— Colson Whitehead

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

— Colson Whitehead