Oz Osborn

“How to get through the day if every indignity capsized you in a ditch? One learned to focus one’s attention.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“It was crazy to run and crazy not to run. How could a boy look past the school’s property line, see that free and living world beyond, and not contemplate a dash to freedom? To write one’s own story for once. To forbid the thought of escape, even that slightest butterfly thought of escape, was to murder one’s humanity”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“Dr. King spoke of how his daughter longed to visit the amusement park on Stewart Avenue in Atlanta. Yolanda begged her parents whenever she spotted the big sign from the expressway or the commercials came on TV. Dr. King had to tell her in his low, sad rumble about the segregation system that kept colored boys and girls on the other side of the fence. Explain the misguided thinking of some whites—not all whites, but enough whites—that gave it force and meaning. He counseled his daughter to resist the lure of hatred and bitterness and assured her that “Even though you can’t go to Fun Town, I want you to know that you are as good as anybody who goes into Fun Town.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“It was not enough to survive, you have to live—”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys