Colson Whitehead Quotes

My mom's mother was from Virginia, but I don't feel much of a tie. I'm very much anti-South for many, many reasons. Whenever I go down there, people are always looking at me funny, you know.

• People
• Mother
• Funny

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

• Book

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

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

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

• Up

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

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

• Up
• Today

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

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

• Science
• Inspired

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

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

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

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

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.

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

• Job

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

• America
• Slavery

Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third.

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

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

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

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

• American
• History
• Black

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

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