“This, to use an American term in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it.”

“There's something repulsive about an American without money in his pocket.”

“Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear.”

“The term [Americanization] invokes the transformation of the landscape into unnatural mechanical shapes, of night into day, of speed for its own sake, an irrational passion for novelty at the expense of quality, a worship of gimmickry.”

“The flicker of a girl appeared; a tiny shape with huge, brown eyes I would never mistake, not even in death.”

“Throughout this book I will use the terms African-American, black, and Negro interchangeably. There is rarely a logic to it, so please try not to overthink it.”