Colson Whitehead Quotes

I enjoy thinking about how race plays out over the centuries, how technology evolves, how cities transform themselves. These subjects are present in some of my books and absent in others.

• Thinking
• Technology
• Present

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That's my aim and what I see as my mission.

• American

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?

• People
• World
• Important

Generally, I walk around in a glum mood.

• Mood

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

• America
• Slavery

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

If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed.

• Up
• Today

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

• Up

Schools don't teach American history that well, especially a lot of black American history.

• American
• History
• Black

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

I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.

If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.

• Writing

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'm raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on.

• Work
• Kids
• American

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

• Music
• Art
• Inspiration

In fifth grade, we did 10 minutes on slavery and 40 minutes on Abraham Lincoln, and in 10th grade you might do 10 minutes on the civil rights era and 40 minutes on Martin Luther King, and that's it.

• King
• Slavery

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

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

• Important

I try to keep each different book different from the last. So 'Sag Harbor' is very different from 'Apex Hides the Hurt;' 'The Intuitionist,' which is kind of a detective novel, is very different from 'John Henry Days.' I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me.

• Different
• Trying
• Book

I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction.

• Science
• Inspired

Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.

There's not a lot of good TV.

• Good

In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it's so evocative. You think it's a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was.

• America
• Teacher

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