Mat Johnson Quotes & Sayings

I have found that, in the African American oral tradition, if the words are enunciated eloquently enough, no one examines the meaning for definitive truth. — Mat Johnson

I look white to a lot of people. And I'm not. I'm African-American. I'm mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I've dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity. — Mat Johnson

The people, they need someone to live through. Trust me, I used to be in roller derby back in the day. People need a hero. — Mat Johnson

Crackheads destroy things. First, their lives, obviously. And then their families. But they also destroy houses. They light fires and they have poor judgment; both things are required if you're going to be a crackhead. They make houses burn down. They're not as thorough as meth heads, who have the benefit of their exploding labs, but crackheads have left a respectable number of ruined buildings in their wake. A crackhead did it is a reasonable cause of destruction on any forensic report. A history of crackhead infestation is a legitimate explanation for loss of property. — Mat Johnson

Since White America refuses to see its past, they can't really see me either. Add to that a little of Madame C.J.s magic and watch me go invisible. Watch me step outside of history. Assimilation as revolution. That's one thing that most of us know that white folks don't. Race doesn't really exist. Culture? Ethnicity? Sure. Class too. But race is just a bunch of rules meant to keep us on the bottom. Race is a strategy. The rest is just people acting playing roles. — Mat Johnson

Okay, here's the secret. It's not really a secret, but I'll frame it to you as one. The same people who despise you for identifying as mixed? Those are the same people who, when you do identify as black, despise you for not being black enough. And there's nothing you can actually do to be black enough, for them. Because it's not really how you act that they despise. It's you. Your very existence." She — Mat Johnson

Even drunk, I knew any escape plan that involved going to Detroit, Michigan, was a harbinger of doom. — Mat Johnson

I'm watching you, big boy, my eyes say, but his are closed so it's an optical monologue. — Mat Johnson

My weak suit is whatever each reader hates about each book. — Mat Johnson

The sociopaths - that's the real problem. The whole street demeanor is about pretending to be a sociopath as well so that the real ones can't find you. — Mat Johnson

I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding evidence of myself there, after being told my footprints did not exist on that sand. I think the work of the great white writers is important, but I think it's most important when it's negotiating me and my people, because I am as arrogant and selfish a reader as any other. — Mat Johnson

People look at interracial couples through their own, distorting racial lens. It doesn't matter what form they take. — Mat Johnson

I've been writing forever, 20 years. — Mat Johnson

I start with fear. It comes in so many forms. When I write, some of the fear goes away. So I write into the fear, and even more dissipates. I want to be scared while writing. I want to bring it to the surface so I can banish it. — Mat Johnson

I was participating in something horrible, and my only defense is that I was motivated by my own fear, which of course is no defense at all. — Mat Johnson

For some reason, people always assign high cheekbones to some ethnicity, but apparently by their regards, everybody on earth has high cheekbones. So I don't know if that matters. — Mat Johnson

Long-haul trucking. Just roaming the country, alone, with audiobooks and podcasts, sleeping in the back of the cab, showering at gas stations at 4 a.m., minimal human contact. That's living the dream. — Mat Johnson

A man's daughter is his heart. Just with feet, walking out in the world. — Mat Johnson

People aren't social. They're tribal. Race doesn't exist, but tribes are real. — Mat Johnson

My strong suit is that I've been willing to risk on the page to get somewhere interesting. — Mat Johnson

TEKELI-LI. Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li. I got that from Pym. I got that from Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, specifically. Pym that is maddening, Pym that is brilliance, Pym whose failures entice instead of repel. Pym that flows and ignites and Pym that becomes so entrenched it stagnates for hundreds of words at a time. A book that at points makes no sense, gets wrong both history and science, and yet stumbles into an emotional truth greater than both. — Mat Johnson

What I discovered during my studies in Poe's and other early Americans' texts was the intellectual source of racial Whiteness. Here, in these pages, was the very fossil record of how this odd and illogical sickness formed. Here was the twisted mythic underpinnings of modern racial thought that could never before be dismantled because we were standing on them. — Mat Johnson

she loves everyone else here enough that she is willing to let them see all of who she is in this moment. — Mat Johnson

You've got to admit, slick, you got a skill for avoiding the devil."

"That just means that now the devils out there, looking for me...and that devil is very mad. — Mat Johnson

Curing America's racial pathology couldn't be done with good intentions or presidential elections. — Mat Johnson

Some people age, and some just dehydrate. — Mat Johnson

Everybody just gets on my nerves after like, 10 minutes, you know. — Mat Johnson

There are two types of lazy bosses. One is so lazy that they make you do not only your own work but theirs too. Worse, they lie to you about it, unloading all responsibility for their actions. The other is so lazy that not only do they not do their own work but they can't even be bothered to provide you work to do. These bosses lie as well, but only to themselves, passively. The first is the hardest boss to work for, the second the easiest. — Mat Johnson

There is a rational part of my brain and it says, Don't zap them, Warren. Ask questions first, find out who they are and why they're here, on your doorstep, lurking, banging. Find out their hopes and dreams. Offer them a glass of water. And that part of my brain has control of my left hand, which is holding the doorknob. The right hand fucking zaps the crackhead. — Mat Johnson

The fear comes back but I don't listen to it. I decide the fear itself is nothing of merit, a few little chemicals in my brain, dripping the wrong way. I walk right over and if I must I will walk right through. — Mat Johnson

I love the idea of biracial. I actually don't use the word biracial. I tend to use mixed. Biracial to me accentuates the word race, and, you know, I don't really care for it. — Mat Johnson

Here I was, on the cusp of my own great dream, my own impossible truth, and this gluttonous man was crowding it with his improbable vision. There wasn't enough magic in the universe for both of us. Worse, Garth's mad theory put mine in an altogether new light. Was I as crazy as his fat ass? — Mat Johnson

I was a boy that age once, and I know that 97.7 percent of their bodies are semen and the 2.8 percent is an incendiary device for spraying it. — Mat Johnson

Forgiveness comes later in life, after you've created enough disasters of your own. — Mat Johnson

I'm really suspicious of anybody who comes in and says, this is your identity now, or this is your belief system, and now that you have this, everything's going to be great. — Mat Johnson

It is a great moment in every freak's life when he or she finds out that at least they are not the only one. — Mat Johnson

And that's the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people's actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In — Mat Johnson

Every misogynist came out of a woman. — Mat Johnson

In my head, I was getting 'gangsta,' which I've always felt showed greater intent than getting 'gangster' in that it expresses a willful unlawfulness even upon its own linguistic representation. — Mat Johnson