Colson Whitehead Quotes

I was allowed to write about race using an elevator metaphor because of Toni Morrison and David Bradley and Ralph Ellison. Hopefully, me being weird allows someone who's 16 and wanting to write inspires them to have their own weird take on the world, and they can see the different kinds of African American voices being published.

- Colson Whitehead

I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint.

- Colson Whitehead

A lot of early Misfits song titles are inspired by old B-movies, which were my Popeye's spinach when I was a kid.

- Colson Whitehead

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

- Colson Whitehead

I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always an errand you can do along there, whether it's picking up contacts or buying poker chips.

- Colson Whitehead

I didn't know I was a zombie pedant until I started considering what from the zombie canon to keep in 'Zone One' and what to ignore.

- Colson Whitehead

Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.

- Colson Whitehead

I've always thought the Nat Turner story to be very interesting.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer.

- Colson Whitehead

'Zone One' has one kind of an apocalypse, and 'The Underground Railroad' another. In both cases, the narrators are animated by a hope in a better place of refuge - in the last surviving human outpost, Up North. Does it exist? They can only believe.

- Colson Whitehead

I knew that a zombie book would not particularly appeal to some of my previous readers, but it was artistically compelling, and being able to do a short nonfiction book about poker was really fun and great.

- Colson Whitehead

I write at home. I like to be able to take a nap, watch TV, make a sandwich, and if I wake up and don't feel like working, I'm not going to bang my head on my desk all day: I'll go out and do something else.

- Colson Whitehead

In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away realizing - not surprisingly - that many slave masters were sadists who spent a lot of time thinking up creative ways of hurting people.

- Colson Whitehead

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

- Colson Whitehead

I usually have two or three ideas floating around. When I have free time, the one I end up thinking most about is the one I end up pursuing.

- Colson Whitehead

In '82 and '83, that was the rise of the VCR. Every Friday, my brother and I would go to Crazy Eddie's - which was a video store in Manhattan - and rent five horror movies. And that's basically what we did, basically, for three years. Becoming social misfits.

- Colson Whitehead

In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes.

- Colson Whitehead

Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.

- Colson Whitehead

I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction.

- Colson Whitehead

People don't like it when you compare the miracle of childbirth to writing a book, but I think there is some overlap in the two because they are both pure agony.

- Colson Whitehead

Growing up as a product of the black civil-rights movement, I had a lot of different models for black weirdness, whether it's Richard Pryor or James Baldwin or Jimmy Walker.

- Colson Whitehead

Stephen King in general, as well as films of the apocalypse from the '70s, had a big influence on 'Zone One.'

- Colson Whitehead

I was always into comic books and horror stories and a huge consumer of pop culture. And then I worked for awhile for 'The Village Voice'.

- Colson Whitehead

I always try to mix it up with each book - changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me.

- Colson Whitehead

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.

- Colson Whitehead

In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it's so evocative. You think it's a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was.

- Colson Whitehead

Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone.

- Colson Whitehead

You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people.

- Colson Whitehead

Slavery was a violent, brutal, immoral system, and in accurately depicting how it worked, you have to include that, obviously. Or else you are lying.

- Colson Whitehead

Part of any book is establishing the rules at the end of the world. My first book, 'The Intuitionist,' takes place in an alternative world where elevator inspectors are important, so you have to establish rules, and part of that is, How do people talk? How do they behave?

- Colson Whitehead

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That's my aim and what I see as my mission.

- Colson Whitehead

It's always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher - readers! - who are going to appreciate them.

- Colson Whitehead

I live in Brooklyn. I moved here 14 years ago for the cheap rent. It was a little embarrassing because I was raised in Manhattan, and so I was a bit of a snob about the other boroughs.

- Colson Whitehead

I was 7 years old when 'Roots' was first broadcast, and my parents gathered all us kids around the TV to learn about how we got here. But it wasn't until I sat down and immersed myself in the research that I got the barest inkling of what it meant to be a slave.

- Colson Whitehead

In fifth grade, we did 10 minutes on slavery and 40 minutes on Abraham Lincoln, and in 10th grade you might do 10 minutes on the civil rights era and 40 minutes on Martin Luther King, and that's it.

- Colson Whitehead

I was sort of a miserable teenager.

- Colson Whitehead

For me, the terror of the zombie is that at any moment, your friend, your family, you neighbor, your teacher, the guy at the bodega down the street, can be revealed as the monster they've always been.

- Colson Whitehead

I started writing in the '90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what a black writer has to do. I didn't have the burden of representation.

- Colson Whitehead

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

- Colson Whitehead

I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French.

- Colson Whitehead

Once I got to college, it seemed that the Hamptons were a little bit too posh for me and didn't represent the kind of values I was embracing in my late teens. So, I didn't go out there, except to visit my parents, for a long time. And then, after 9/11, I discovered it was a nice, mellow place to hang out.

- Colson Whitehead

I like to explore different ideas of race, how the concept of race has evolved in the country. It's one thing I enjoy talking about, but I don't feel compelled to talk about it.

- Colson Whitehead

If the world's nations can set aside their petty bickering over religion, politics, and territory, certainly I can 'get that Olympic Spirit' and rise above my prejudices.

- Colson Whitehead

I like questions that tee me up to make weird jokes, frankly.

- Colson Whitehead

Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!

- Colson Whitehead

Having a wife and kids drove home the brutal reality of the slave system for me - the price it exacted on families. On the other hand, whenever I despair over our history, I am brought back to hope, the hope that things will get better, for my children.

- Colson Whitehead

I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before.

- Colson Whitehead

The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well.

- Colson Whitehead

I try to keep each different book different from the last. So 'Sag Harbor' is very different from 'Apex Hides the Hurt;' 'The Intuitionist,' which is kind of a detective novel, is very different from 'John Henry Days.' I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me.

- Colson Whitehead

If you go to a big publishing house, editorial aside, it's completely white.

- Colson Whitehead

The readership for 'Sag Harbor' was different from people who'd read me before - it was linear and realistic, not as strange as 'The Intuitionist.' Did they carry over to 'Zone One,' a story about zombies in New York? Some, some not. I'm used to people not caring about my other books.

- Colson Whitehead

I don't generally follow sports. At an early age, I discovered that nature had apportioned me only a small reserve of enthusiasm. Best to ration.

- Colson Whitehead

I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm always trying to switch voices and genres.

- Colson Whitehead

The Declaration of Independence is that sacred American text so full of meaning and purpose and yet quite empty if you examine it and pull it apart because the words 'All Men' exclude a vast number of citizens.

- Colson Whitehead

In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live.

- Colson Whitehead

I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.

- Colson Whitehead

There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters.

- Colson Whitehead

If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.

- Colson Whitehead

I use New York to talk about home, but the ideas in 'Colossus' could be transferred to other cities. The story about Central Park is really about the first day of spring in any park. The Coney Island chapter is really about beaches and summer and heat waves.

- Colson Whitehead

Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third.

- Colson Whitehead

For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.

- Colson Whitehead

I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.

- Colson Whitehead

I enjoy thinking about how race plays out over the centuries, how technology evolves, how cities transform themselves. These subjects are present in some of my books and absent in others.

- Colson Whitehead

I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality.

- Colson Whitehead

My mom's mother was from Virginia, but I don't feel much of a tie. I'm very much anti-South for many, many reasons. Whenever I go down there, people are always looking at me funny, you know.

- Colson Whitehead

Schools don't teach American history that well, especially a lot of black American history.

- Colson Whitehead

A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise.

- Colson Whitehead

The movie 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' was a sacred text in my household.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me.

- Colson Whitehead

Access to information, to music or any kind of culture, is getting faster and faster and more streamlined. At each juncture, people are thrown into tumult and have to adapt or die.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on.

- Colson Whitehead

Each book requires a different kind of treatment and structural gambit.

- Colson Whitehead

As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out.

- Colson Whitehead

Most of my books have always worked through juxtaposition, jumping through different point of views and time.

- Colson Whitehead

A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working.

- Colson Whitehead

I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college.

- Colson Whitehead

'Driving while black' was taught to me at a young age.

- Colson Whitehead

The contemporary casino is more than a gambling destination: it is a multifarious pleasure enclosure intended to satisfy every member of the family unit.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive.

- Colson Whitehead

In college, I wrote maybe three short stories.

- Colson Whitehead

'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it.

- Colson Whitehead

Other people have hang-ups about what's literary or genre or whatever, and that's sort of not my problem. You're supposed to write what you have to write, and you're supposed to keep moving.

- Colson Whitehead

If self-absorption, vague yearnings, and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins, then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat.

- Colson Whitehead

I've always had a love of cards, ever since I was a little kid. I think poker, as a system, describes the chaos of the world. Our sudden reversals, our freak streaks of fortune. The belief that the next hand can save you, and the inevitable failure of the next hand to save you. I think that describes my world view pretty well.

- Colson Whitehead

Generally, I walk around in a glum mood.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm someone who just likes being in my cave and thinking up weird stuff.

- Colson Whitehead

I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

- Colson Whitehead

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

- Colson Whitehead

You can't rush inspiration.

- Colson Whitehead

The idea of sacrifice is integral to the John Henry myth. Heroic figures have to die in order for us to have our stories; we live and stand on their bones.

- Colson Whitehead

I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside.

- Colson Whitehead

When I'm working on a book, I try to do eight pages a week. That seems like a good amount. Less than that, I'm not getting a nice momentum, and more than that, I'm probably putting out too much crap.

- Colson Whitehead

There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there.

- Colson Whitehead

'Zone One' comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary.

- Colson Whitehead

I never actually went anywhere when I was a journalist. I was a critic, and I just sort of got stuff in the mail and chatted about it.

- Colson Whitehead

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

- Colson Whitehead

I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters.

- Colson Whitehead

I wanted to be one of these multidisciplinary critics who is doing music one day, TV the next, and books the next.

- Colson Whitehead

Some books are well-received with critics; other books sell.

- Colson Whitehead

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

- Colson Whitehead