Colson Whitehead Quotes

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.

Write what you know.

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

• Age
• Black
• Driving

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

• Vegas

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

• School
• Movie
• High

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.

• Home
• Summer
• Spring

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'.

• Culture

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

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

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

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

• Different
• Book

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

• Trying

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

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.

• Nature
• Age
• Small

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

• Up
• Weird

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.

• Writing
• Career
• Free

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.

• Slavery

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

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

• Up

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

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

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.

• Kids
• Parents

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

• Interesting