Colson Whitehead Quotes

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

• People

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

• Time
• Different

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

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.

• Ignore

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

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

• King

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

• Good

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

• Vegas

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.

• World
• Pretty
• Hand

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

• House

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.

• Live

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.

• Time
• Long
• Parents

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.

• People
• Moving

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.

• Words

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!

• People
• Work
• Book

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

• Music

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

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

• School
• Movie
• High

Write what you know.

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.

• Good
• Book
• Nice

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.

• People
• Up
• Time

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

• Up

I'm always trying to switch voices and genres.

• Trying

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

• Job