Michele

“Strivers grasped for something better-and crooks schemes about how to manipulate the present system. The world as it might be versus the world as it was. But perhaps Carney was being too stark. Plenty of crooks were strivers, and plenty of strivers bent the law.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Twenty years is a while. They were both older, fatter, and sadder--"which is the general trajectory"--and that was a nice couple of days.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“He cleared his throat, he gestured, and remained a black ghost, store after store, accumulating the standard humiliations, until he climbed the black iron steps to Aronowitz & Sons and the proprietor asked, “Can I help you, sir?” Can I help you as in Can I help you? As opposed to What are you doing here? Ray Carney, in his years, had a handle on the variations.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“If you believed in the holy circulation of envelopes, everything that went down happened because a man took an envelope and didn’t do his job. An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle