Colson Whitehead Quotes

Quotes to Explore

• I was baptized a Baptist, but I'm just Christian, as far as I'm concerned. I could go in any church, doesn't matter if it's Baptist, Protestant, Episcopal, or Catholic.

  

  Queen Latifah
  • Church
  • Christian
  • Catholic

• Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Men
  • Down
  • Dinner

• Many may look at me and see mostly what I have lost. I struggle to speak, my eyesight's not great, my right arm and leg are paralyzed, and I left a job I loved representing southern Arizona in Congress.

  

  Gabrielle Giffords
  • Great
  • May
  • Job

• 'But,' say the puling, pusillanimous cowards, 'we shall be subject to a long and bloody war if we declare independence.' On the contrary, I affirm it the only step that can bring the contest to a speedy and happy issue.

  

  Samuel Adams
  • Long
  • War
  • Happy

• It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Book
  • Truth

• I'm a nature girl. I grew up in Colorado and was always outside. I still am, even when I'm in the city.

  

  Kate Hudson
  • Up
  • Nature
  • Girl

• Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups.

  

  Tariq Ali
  • World
  • Men
  • Women

• I think it comes from far away inside me, to be strong to survive everything that comes my way. I think, going back to the beginning, feeling like an alien in an English school when I was eight, that set up my pride very early on. I think I'm very defensive, but I'm trying not to be like that anymore.

  

  Maggie Cheung
  • Up
  • Trying
  • School

• Because if you have a strong foundation like we have, then you can build or rebuild anything on it. But if you've got a weak foundation you can't build anything.

  

  Jack Scalia
  • Strong
  • You
  • Foundation

• I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent as possible so I could get on with it and tell the story, which was inherently interesting.

  

  Edmund White
  • Writing
  • Interesting
  • Style

• Even before my audition, there were several pages missing from my script because those bits were so unbelievably secret not even I was allowed to see them.

  

  Ian Hart
  • See
  • Secret
  • Missing

• A lot of people have come with 100 songs and never had the impact that I have with one, and I'm well aware of that.

  

  OMI
  • People
  • Never
  • Impact

• Well, the infrastructure part of the stimulus has worked. There's absolutely no question about it. We can demonstrate in Pennsylvania and other states around the union how it's produced good, paying jobs both on the construction sites and back in American factories. It has worked.

  

  Ed Rendell
  • Good
  • American
  • Question

• I crave working on those small independent movies because I love going to see those myself.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Independent
  • Movies
  • Working

• We have for a long time neglected our children. They are our richest treasure. We must give them time, attention and the love of our pure, unselfish hearts.

  

  Dada Vaswani
  • Time
  • Children
  • Love

• When smut's to be smitten Smoot will smite For G-d, for country, And Fahrenheit.

  

  Ogden Nash
  • Country

• Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • House

• Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment.

  

  Irving Kristol
  • May
  • Experience
  • Girl

• I'm trying to accept the idea that there's a different definition of what matters now. The rating for James Corden at 12:30 at night doesn't matter as much as the number of hits he gets on YouTube when he goes driving around with Adele. There are old dogs out there doing new tricks, and I got to recognize them.

  

  David Bianculli
  • Different
  • Trying
  • Dog

• For to love is to give what one is, his very being, in the most absolute, the most brazenly metaphysical, the least phenomenalizable sense of this word.

  

  Jacques Maritain

• When an honorable man yields, in an hour of weakness, to temptation, his first step toward atonement is confession.

  

  Emile Gaboriau
  • Temptation
  • Confession
  • Yields

• Only two rules really count. Never miss an opportunity to relieve yourself; never miss a chance to sit down and rest your feet.

  

  Edward VIII
  • Opportunity
  • Rest

• I've always said that theater was where I began, so everything I do now has a bit of my theater background in it. It was my training.

  

  Luke Evans
  • Training

• Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third.

  Colson Whitehead