Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Colson Whitehead

Quote by Colson Whitehead

“Patrol was not difficult work. They stopped any niggers they saw and demanded their passes. They stopped niggers they knew to be free, for their amusement but also to remind the Africans of the forces arrayed against them, whether they were owned by a white man or not.”

Quote by Colson Whitehead

Work

The Underground Railroad

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist known for his distinctive literary style and profound insights into historical themes. His works cover a range of topics from slavery to modern urban life, with his 'New York Trilogy' and 'The Underground Railroad' being particularly notable. more

You May Also Like

“Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators that they bear, the genes, are basically the same kind of molecule in all of us—from bacteria to elephants. We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules called DNA— but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.”

“You would think that honour has been reconciled to its lexical origins or bravery, glory and honesty. Yet, a special entry in the social glossary has reserved it exclusively to an organ that is safely nestled between a woman’s legs, and upon its compromise, which is a common male practice, hell and damnation befall the legs and their owner, never the invader.”

“It is the horrific crime that seems to be accepted among many Arab societies, conveniently coined ‘honour killing.’ This must be the most contradictory term I have ever come across for what is honourable about cold-blooded murder? Just like the heinous crime the term itself is gravely flawed.”