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Sometimes it is hard to shake the feeling that, all jokes aside, there really is an epidemic of sorrow sweeping our world, the full brunt of which is being borne, for now, by only a luckless few.

— Teju Cole Open City (2011)

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More quotes by Teju Cole

Precisely because everyone takes a shortcut, nothing works and, for this reason, the only way to get anything done is to take another shortcut.”

Every Day Is for the Thief (2007)

And again, the empty space that was, I now saw and admitted, the obvious: the ruins of the World Trade Center. The place had become a metonym of its disaster.

Open City (2011)

Blacks, ‘we blacks’ had known rougher ports of entry [...] This was the acknowledgement he wanted, in his brusque fashion, from every ‘brother’ he met.

Open City (2011)

I couldn't remember what life was like before I started walking.”

Open City (2011)

Did the Palestinians build the concentration camps? He said. What about the the Armenians: do their deaths mean less because they are not Jews.

Open City (2011)

All Teju Cole quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Teju Cole (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.