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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 -
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
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
In college, I wrote maybe three short stories.
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
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Generally, I walk around in a glum mood.
Colson Whitehead -
You can't rush inspiration.
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 -
There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters.
Colson Whitehead -
'Driving while black' was taught to me at a young age.
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
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You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people.
Colson Whitehead -
I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.
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 -
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 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 -
What isn't said is as important as what is said.
Colson Whitehead
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'Zone One' comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary.
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 -
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 -
Most of my books have always worked through juxtaposition, jumping through different point of views and time.
Colson Whitehead