Quotessence
Home / Authors / Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleAfrican AmericansBookThinkingWritingSlaveryRacismBlacksWorldAmericaIdeasLifeRace RelationsTryingCitiesDifferentFreedomIfsKnowsNew York

Famous Colson Whitehead Quotes

“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.”

WarAmericaUnited StatesSlaveryCrueltyUsaUnited States Of AmericaAfrican AmericansTheftRace RelationsUsNative AmericansDelusions
Book:The Underground Railroad
Create image

“He was born in Odessa and settled on Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in 1906; his family's house had been burned down the previous October. Pogroms, massacres. America was in the massacre racket, too, Heshie observed, but they concentrated on Negroes and Indians for the most part. He figured they'd come for him once they ran out, but that might take years.”

AmericaNew YorkAfrican AmericansBlacksMassacresJewsNative AmericansAntisemitismPogroms
Book:Crook Manifesto
Create image

“The iron horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly's words returned to her: "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.”

AmericaCoraUndergroundRailroadWhiteheadColsonLumbly
Book:The Underground Railroad
Create image