Colson Whitehead Quotes

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.

• Crazy
• Brother
• Friday

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

• Song
• Inspired

You can't rush inspiration.

• Inspiration

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

• Trying

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.

• People
• Work
• Live

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

• Work
• Trying
• Why

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.

• Great
• Book
• Fun

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

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.

• Up
• Different
• Black

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

• Vegas

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

• America

In college, I wrote maybe three short stories.

• College

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

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

• Up
• Thinking
• Weird

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

• House

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

• King

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

• Time
• Different

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.

• World
• Different
• American

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.

• God
• Children
• Family

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

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.

• Different
• Country
• Explore

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

• Book

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

• Good

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.

• Time
• Good
• Experience