Cool Machine Quotes

“That was him all right, a heap of creaky floorboards and busted windows. Aches and agonies squatted in him, unwanted tenants in his extremities and joints.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“He had been suckered before and fallen for scams. Swindled himself when he let vanity or pride get the best of him. Same as anyone. But he’d never been so foolish as to fall for that long con, the biggest con of all, that there were other places besides New York City.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“Who are you now and who do you want to be? How are you going to live your life? What’s next?”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“Crime in its ingenuity devised new permutations daily, making every citizen a victim or a witness.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“It’s harder to find a good coffee table than it is to fall in love.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“Like everyone else, Pepper contained the fucking yin and the fucking yang, and they had been out of harmony. He was not religious and had never understood how the Christian could hate the Jew, or the Jew the Muslim, or whatever combination. It was all a scam; they competed over who had pulled off the better con. Bragging rights for that honor had its place of course; the body count over the centuries seemed excessive, however. The damned Buddhists, though. The Buddhists he met during the war had introduced him to their faith. Now he was stuck with it. Whether it was painted on the walls of tenements or written across the sky in a wisp of cloud, he had seen the void that contained the light and heard the silent music that had no sound yet contained every note of the infinite.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“They’d elevated him to an adjective,”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“These lean boys were entirely self-concerned, as worldly as ingrown hairs.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“More unforgivable”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine

“up.”
― Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine