The Last White Man Quotes

“…the way people act around you, it changes what you are, who you are.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“...like himself, to act undeniably like himself, but this was more difficult than he had imagined, impossible really, for what was more unlike oneself, more awkward, than trying to be oneself, and it was throwing him off, this artificiality, but he had no idea what to replace it with, and so he began instead to mirror the others around him, to echo the way they spoke and walked and moved and the way they held their mouths, like they were performing something, and he was trying to perform it too, and what it was he did not know, but whatever it was it was not enough, or his performance of it was off, because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in, messing things up for himself, deeply frustrating, did not go away all day.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“...often he did not have the energy to think, but when he did, he thought of what made a death a good death, and his sense was that a good death would be one that did not scare his boy, that a father's duty was not to avoid dying in front of his son, this a father could not control, but rather that if a father did have to die in front of his son, he ought to die as well as he was able, to do it in a way that left his son with something, that left his son with the strength to live, and the strength to know that one day he could die well himself, as his father had....”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Oona's mother was active online, and listened to the radio, and watched the news, and she had come to believe she was on the inside, among the elect, those who understood the plot, the plot her daughter said was ridiculous, a plot that had been building for years, for decades, maybe for centuries, the plot against their kind, yes their kind, no matter what her daughter said, for they had a kind, the only people who could not call themselves a people in this country, and there were not so many of them left, and now it had arrived, and was upon them, and she was afraid, for what could she do, but there were those among them who would stand up, stand up and protect her, and she had to believe in them, and be ready, be ready as best she could, to preserve herself, and especially her daughter, her daughter who was the future....”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Oona’s mother had not been a fantasist when Oona and her brother were children, or rather, if she had, the fantasy she inhabited was a common one, the belief that life was fair and would turn out for the best and good people like them got what they deserved for the most part, exceptions being just that, exceptions, tragedies, but she had not worked after the twins were born, and when her husband had died, unexpectedly early, in the prime of health, he left her enough money to get by, but he took away that fantasy, leaving her alone to grapple with the slow loss of her son, in a world that did not care and was getting worse all the time, worse and worse, and more and more dangerous, a danger you could see all around you, all you had to do was to look at the crime and the potholes in the streets and the weird people who now came when you called for anything, for a plumber, an electrician, for help with your garden, for help with anything at all.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“… they felt the dead daily, hourly, as they lived their lives, and their feeling of the dead was important to them, an important part of what made up their particular way of living, and not to be hidden from, for it could not be hidden from, it could not be hidden from at all.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“… he had begun by feeling that under the surface, it was still him, who else could it be, but it was not that simple, and the way people act around you, a change is what you are, who you are, and Oona said she understood, but it was like learning, a foreign language, and when you tried to speak a foreign language, you lost your sense of humor, no matter how much you tried, you could not be funny the way you used to be…”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Anders’s pale father was the only pale person present, the only pale person left in the entire town, for there were by that point no others, and then his casket was closed and his burial was occurring and he was committed to the soil, the last white man, and after that, after him, there were none.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“You’re so beautiful,” her mother said as she was leaving. “You should get a gun.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“... a white man had indeed shot a dark man, but also that the dark man and the white man were the same.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man: A Novel

“...a gun was a marker on the journey of death, and was to be respected as such, like a coffin or a grave or a meal in winter, not to be foolish with...”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man: A Novel

“Oona's mother resisted the notion that violence was happening, or that substantial violence was happening, and said that if there was violence it was because there were paid aggressors on the other side, saboteurs, and that they were trying to kill both our defenders and our people in general, and they were sometimes killing their own kind, to make us look bad, and also because some of their own kind supported us, and they killed them for that, and that the main point was separation, it was not that we were better than them, although we were better than them, how could you deny it, but that we needed our own places, where we could take care of our own, because our people were in trouble, so many of us in trouble, and the dark people could have their own places, and there they could do their own dark things, or whatever, and we would not stop them, but we would not participate in our own eradication, that had to end, and now there was no time to wait, now they were converting us, and lowering us, and that was a sign, a sign that if we did not act in this moment there would be no more moments left and we would be gone.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“If he stayed, it would not be for them--need not be for them--but for himself. And yet each day he did stay. Bored and tense, true, but he stayed. And he discovered thereby how badly he wanted to stay. That the impulse to live was in him stronger than he might have imagined, undiminished by his bleak circumstances.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“The clerk was a beautiful man with delicate brown eyes and big brown hands, and he had been beautiful when he was a boy too, but not this beautiful, and she asked him if he was happy for having changed, and he said his changing colour had been only one of several changes he had been through recently, it all flowed together, he had gotten married the week before her brother's funeral, yes married, he repeated to her expression of surprise, his own expression no less surprised, as though he could barely believe it himself, and he was happy in his marriage, and he loved his husband, but her brother was there too, with him, and he would always be there, he knew that now, he had known it at the funeral, he had married and found a love and lost a love and changed colour, and which of these was most significant for him he could not say, but probably, probably it was not the colour.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Anders had decided he would talk to him, finally after all these years, he would stop being nice to him, which was not really being nice to him, it was just treating the cleaning guy like a puppy, a dog, that you give a couple pats to, and call out good boy, and instead Anders would talk to him, and see what he had to say, not because Anders was better than before, but because the way Anders saw stuff was not the same, because the cleaning guy could probably tell Anders a few things, and Anders could probably stand to learn.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Anders hoped he looked more brave than he felt, and the three of them were armed but they stopped when they saw him, a few paces away, and they stared at him with contempt and fascination, and Anders thought the one he knew stared at him with enthusiasm too, like this was special for him, personal, and Anders could perceive how self-righteous they were, how certain that he, Anders, was in the wrong, that he was the bandit here, trying to rob them, they who had been robbed already and had nothing left, just their whiteness, the worth of it, and they would not let him take that, not him nor anyone else.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“At work, Anders became quieter than he used to be, less sure of how any action of his would be perceived, and it was like he had been recast as a supporting character on the set of the television show where his life was being enacted, but even so he had not yet lost all hope that a return to his old role was possible, to his old centrality, or if not centrality, then at least to a role better than this peripheral one.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“She said her father had gone without warning, it had been preposterous, no other word for it, here he was, and then he was gone, and it had made her think there was a trapdoor under each of us, a trapdoor that could open at any second, like we were walking on a bridge of ropes and planks, swaying high above a canyon, and some of the planks were rotten, and you could take a normal step but find that you had stepped into nothingness, without even hearing the snap, and that realization should have caused you to be more careful, to step lightly, but it had not done that to her.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“there was a dark-skinned cleaning guy at the gym, he worked nights, and Anders had always been nice to him, but the cleaning guy had started to look at him in a new way after Anders changed, and Anders had not liked it, but it got him thinking, and he had realized that the cleaning guy was the only guy at the gym who never exercised there, and he was such a small guy, and was he hired because of that, because he was small, in a place where it was important to be big, and did he have a family, bad where he came from, or was he alone, and why had Anders never asked him these things, and why did the new way he looked at Anders bother Anders, the way he looked at Anders like Anders could talk to him, but Anders had not yet talked to him, not beyond the usual hey there, have a good one, and Anders had decided he would talk to him, finally after all these years, he would stop being nice to him, which was not really being nice to him, it was just treating the cleaning guy like a puppy, a dog, that you give a couple pats to, and call out good boy, and instead Anders would talk to him, and see what he had to say, not because Anders was better than before, but because the way Anders saw stuff was not the same, because the cleaning guy could probably tell Anders a few things, and Anders could probably stand to learn.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“One morning Andrés, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.

Anders looked at her, at his daughter, and could not see her averted face, only her hair, her ear, the edges of her cheekbone and of her jaw, but also he could see her so completely, in his mind’s eye, her expression, and just then he imagined her old, without wanting to, he imagined her an old woman, after he and Oona had gone, and he felt it hitting him, this image of his daughter many years hence, and he placed his brown hand on the side of her brown face, soothing her, his brown daughter, his daughter, and miraculously she let him.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Online you could form your own opinion of what was going on and your opinion was, likely as not, different from the next person's, and there was no real way to determine which of you was right, and the boundary between what was in your mind and what was in the world beyond was blurry, so blurry there was almost no boundary at all.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“...he said when his mother was dying he had been certain she would not die, certain until he was not certain, and when he finally knew she was dying, was not sick but dying, he saw how much she wanted to live, until the pain took that from her, and she wanted to go, or did not want to go, but needed to go, needed to go even more than she wanted to stay, and he had not been ready for that, for his mother to need to leave, and it was a terrible thing to see.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Anders knew he would soon lose his father, and that impending loss seemed more concrete now, more real, not like air but like a door or a wall, something you could bang against, bang into, and of course children know they will lose their parents, they know it from early on, but most are able to believe that that particular present will not come, that it is years away....”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Once returned to his own home, Anders wondered whether the rifle actually made him safer, for he felt he was all alone, and it was better to be nonconfrontational than to stand up to trouble, and he imagined that somehow people were more likely to come for him if they found out he was armed, even though they would not find out, even though so many folks were armed, he just had this sense that it was essential not to be seen as a threat, for to be seen as a threat, as dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“… what I would like is a raise.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“…men pushing themselves as hard as they could push themselves, not exercising, but training, and perhaps not even training, but fighting, fighting the gravity the world exerts on all those who walk up on it, exerts seemingly equally, though in actuality not equally, not equally at all.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“…the meaning clear, but the judgment suspended, and left the matter at that.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“…for what was more unlike oneself, more awkward than trying to be oneself, and it was throwing him off, this artificiality, but he had no idea what to replace it with, and so he began instead to mirror the others around him, to echo the way they spoke, and walked and moved, and the way they held their mouths, like they were performing something, and he was trying to perform it, too, and what it was, he did not know, but whatever it was, it was not enough, or his performance of it was off, because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in, of messing things up for himself, deeply frustrating, did not go away all day.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“and the more he looked the less white he seemed, as though looking for his whiteness was the opposite of whiteness, was driving it further away, making him seem desperate,”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“how badly he wanted to stay, that the impulse to live was in him stronger than he might have imagined, undiminished by his bleak circumstances, and by the odd wrapper he was wrapped in, and maybe it was stubbornness, or selfishness, or hope, or fear, and maybe it was desire, the desire to continue to be Anders, or to be with Oona, especially to be with Oona, but whatever it was, it was there, fierce, and so he dressed as warmly as he could, and kept himself fed, and he read and he exercised and waited in his brown skin through those solitary days for what would come next.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man