Mat Johnson

“The Antarctic gives the impression of being white, but really it's blue. Almost entirely constructed of that pale, powder blue that at…

— 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,…

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

“That is how they stay so white: by refusing to accept blemish or history. Whiteness isn't about being something, it is about…

— Mat Johnson

My weak suit is whatever each reader hates about each book.

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

“There are two types of lazy bosses. One is so lazy that they make you do not only your own work but…

— Mat Johnson

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

— Mat Johnson

“In this age when reality is built on big lies, what better place for truth than fiction?”

— Mat Johnson

“The people, they need someone to live through. Trust me, I used to be in roller derby back in the day. People…

— Mat Johnson

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

— Mat Johnson

“In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father's house... Its expansive lawn is utterly useless, wild like it…

— Mat Johnson

“I have always loved quitting jobs. Whether because the job itself was repugnant or the people working at it with me, I…

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

I start with fear. It comes in so many forms. When I write, some of the fear goes away. So I write…

— 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…

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

For some reason, people always assign high cheekbones to some ethnicity, but apparently by their regards, everybody on earth has high cheekbones.…

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

“I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding evidence of myself there, after being told my footprints…

— Mat Johnson

The sociopaths - that's the real problem. The whole street demeanor is about pretending to be a sociopath as well so that…

— Mat Johnson

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

— Mat Johnson

“I was participating in something horrible, and my only defense is that I was motivated by my own fear, which of course…

— 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…

— Mat Johnson

“Curing America's racial pathology couldn't be done with good intentions or presidential elections. Like all diseases, it had to be analyzed at…

— Mat Johnson