Frasi di Colson Whitehead

“Era diventato un conoscitore della poesia trovata nei nascondigli abbandonati. il minuscolo cuneo di spazio stentato fra i mobili ammucchiati e la porta di casa in cui si erano infilati coloro che se ne andavano. L'ampio arco invitante di una vecchia chiesa oppressa dai palazzoni, l'unica porta aperta nell'intero isolato, le macerie sulla scalinata spinte via durante la fuga e il passaggio sgombro a creare una sorta di tappeto per gli sposi diretti alla limousine della luna di miele. Fuori, in campagna, la sola finestra libera fra le altre rivestite di assi al primo piano della fattoria e lo zerbino di vetri infranti. Quelli dentro avevano tentato una sortita e lì la storia si interrompeva. Ce l'avevano fatta?”

“I never know when I start out. You know, I sort of know what the ending is. I know where the characters always end up, and I usually have an image of the last page before I start. I'm a big outliner. But you can't know everything and you have to be open to discovery…”

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

“A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.”

“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.”

“Google “brooklyn writer” and you’ll get”

“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.”

“It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.”

“Cora didn't know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.”

“A society manufactures the heroes it requires.”

“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.”

“My compulsion to write the story was from seeing so many people go unpunished, and so many innocents' stories being untold…”