Colson Whitehead Quotes

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

Hell, covering all with its gloomy vapors, has cast shadows on even the holiest eyes.

Why doesn't that Devil take me with him? It would be much better with him than it is here.

Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power.

That's what 'Hell On Earth' was about: we felt that we were living in hell.

It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell.

Hell is out of fashion - institutional hells at any rate. The populated infernos of the 20th century are more private affairs, the gaps between the bars are the sutures of one's own skull. A valid hell is one from which there is a possibility of redemption, even if this is never achieved, the dungeons of an architecture of grace whose spires point to some kind of heaven. The institutional hells of the present century are reached with one-way tickets, marked Nagasaki and Buchenwald, worlds of terminal horror even more final than the grave.

Fear is the tool of a man-made devil

How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.

Go to hell, Willy, our souls eat poetry, but one has seven deadly sins to feed!

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord? Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom. Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus? Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. (It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery)

And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, "If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.

O comfort-killing night, image of hell, Dim register and notary of shame, Black stage for tragedies and murders fell, Vast sin-concealing chaos, nurse of blame!

And when he had put his hand on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.

Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, Where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.

You heard of hell, well I was sent from it.

Abuse of power comes as no surprise

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

In hell there's a big hotel where the bar just closed and the windows never opened. No phone so you can't call home, and the TV works, but the clicker is broken.

Power won by crime no one ever yet turned to a good purpose.