Develop your own moral code or burn in hell. Colson Whitehead, author of UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

I’ve had a first in 40 plus years as an academic. All my back up organizational strategies failed to yield citation information for a 2008 quote I wanted to use in my third book about mixed methods.. I could picture the article and recall its content, but I could not locate the article/chapter in either my files or through an on-line search. I never trust the accuracy of a secondary site (someone citing someone else).

I toyed with the idea of citing an article on the same topic from the right year, with cooperative page numbers. My rationalization: the author is dead. No one reads that closely.

Colson Whitehead, author of the Underground Railroad, among other works of fiction, says you have to develop your own moral code or burn in hell. Where you draw the line between right and wrong.

Taking the accuracy of citations dead seriously is part of being a scholar. I decided not to use the quote. I am my own police person.