“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.”

“People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse.”

“Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.”

“Splendid. I believe we've achieved a whole new level of doomed.”

“opened the door a crack wide enough for the entire world to pass through .”

“The dream was ennobling but doomed. It was Malcolm's curse to see this before the most of the rest of us; it was the beginning of his sainthood that when black Americans reached that point--when they arrived, that is to say, at their blackness--Malcolm was already there.”