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21 " Curing America’s racial pathology couldn’t be done with good intentions or presidential elections. "
― Mat Johnson , Pym
22 " Some people age, and some just dehydrate. "
― Mat Johnson
23 " The people, they need someone to live through. Trust me, I used to be in roller derby back in the day. People need a hero. "
24 " Here I was, on the cusp of my own great dream, my own impossible truth, and this gluttonous man was crowding it with his improbable vision. There wasn't enough magic in the universe for both of us. Worse, Garth's mad theory put mine in an altogether new light. Was I as crazy as his fat ass? "
25 " That is how they stay so white: by refusing to accept blemish or history. Whiteness isn't about being something, it is about being no thing, nothing, an erasure. Covering over the truth with layers of blank reality just as the snowstorm was now covering our tent...(225) "
26 " You've got to admit, slick, you got a skill for avoiding the devil.""That just means that now the devils out there, looking for me...and that devil is very mad. "
― Mat Johnson , Incognegro
27 " TEKELI-LI. Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li. I got that from Pym. I got that from Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, specifically. Pym that is maddening, Pym that is brilliance, Pym whose failures entice instead of repel. Pym that flows and ignites and Pym that becomes so entrenched it stagnates for hundreds of words at a time. A book that at points makes no sense, gets wrong both history and science, and yet stumbles into an emotional truth greater than both. "
28 " And that’s the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people’s actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In "
29 " she loves everyone else here enough that she is willing to let them see all of who she is in this moment. "
― Mat Johnson , Loving Day
30 " Okay, here’s the secret. It’s not really a secret, but I’ll frame it to you as one. The same people who despise you for identifying as mixed? Those are the same people who, when you do identify as black, despise you for not being black enough. And there’s nothing you can actually do to be black enough, for them. Because it’s not really how you act that they despise. It’s you. Your very existence.” She "
31 " There is a rational part of my brain and it says, Don't zap them, Warren. Ask questions first, find out who they are and why they're here, on your doorstep, lurking, banging. Find out their hopes and dreams. Offer them a glass of water. And that part of my brain has control of my left hand, which is holding the doorknob. The right hand fucking zaps the crackhead. "
32 " You gotta change. With life. Life changes, you got to go with it. Or you get pulled apart.” I "
33 " The fear comes back but I don’t listen to it. I decide the fear itself is nothing of merit, a few little chemicals in my brain, dripping the wrong way. I walk right over and if I must I will walk right through. "
34 " In my head, I was getting “gangsta,” which I’ve always felt showed greater intent than getting “gangster” in that it expresses a willful unlawfulness even upon its own linguistic representation. "
35 " Curing America's racial pathology couldn't be done with good intentions or presidential elections. Like all diseases, it had to be analyzed at a microscopic level. What I discovered during my studies in Poe's and other early Americans' texts was the intellectual source of racial Whiteness. Here, in these pages, was the very fossil record of how this odd and illogical sickness formed. Here was the twisted mythic underpinnings of modern racial thought that could never before be dismantled because we were standing on them. (8) "
36 " The Antarctic gives the impression of being white, but really it's blue. Almost entirely constructed of that pale, powder blue that at times can darken to rich, cobalt haze, as it did now around me. (96) "
37 " In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father's house... Its expansive lawn is utterly useless, wild like it smokes its own grass and dreams of being a jungle. "
38 " It’s foolish and a desperate plan, but I accept that I am a foolish and desperate individual, so it’s perfect. "