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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 envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.
Colson Whitehead
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I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters.
Colson Whitehead
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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 not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer.
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 -
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 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 -
I always try to mix it up with each book - changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me.
Colson Whitehead
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I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive.
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 -
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 -
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 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 -
'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
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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 -
Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.
Colson Whitehead -
There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters.
Colson Whitehead -
You can't rush inspiration.
Colson Whitehead