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" 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
Inspired
Kid
Old
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" Access to information, to music or any kind of culture, is getting faster and faster and more streamlined. At each juncture, people are thrown into tumult and have to adapt or die. "
Colson Whitehead
Information
Culture
People
" I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me. "
Colson Whitehead
Keep
Trying
Things
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
System
Brutal
How
" I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint. "
Colson Whitehead
Like
Just
Feel
" There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters. "
Colson Whitehead
Always
Some
Sophomore
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Me
Weird
American
" In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes. "
Colson Whitehead
Absurd
Days
Idea
" The readership for 'Sag Harbor' was different from people who'd read me before - it was linear and realistic, not as strange as 'The Intuitionist.' Did they carry over to 'Zone One,' a story about zombies in New York? Some, some not. I'm used to people not caring about my other books. "
Colson Whitehead
New
People
Caring
" There's not a lot of good TV. "
Colson Whitehead
TV
Good
Lot
" Stephen King in general, as well as films of the apocalypse from the '70s, had a big influence on 'Zone One.' "
Colson Whitehead
Big
King
General
" I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer. "
Colson Whitehead
Representative
Healer
Blackness
" I never actually went anywhere when I was a journalist. I was a critic, and I just sort of got stuff in the mail and chatted about it. "
Colson Whitehead
Just
Never
Mail
" For me, the terror of the zombie is that at any moment, your friend, your family, you neighbor, your teacher, the guy at the bodega down the street, can be revealed as the monster they've always been. "
Colson Whitehead
You
Family
Friend
" 'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it. "
Colson Whitehead
Started
First
Finish
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Book
Good
Momentum
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Whatever
Write
Lot
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Research
Myself
Parents
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Free
Black
Writing
" I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction. "
Colson Whitehead
Horror
Movies
Science
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Over
Race
Technology
" Schools don't teach American history that well, especially a lot of black American history. "
Colson Whitehead
American
Well
Teach
" I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. "
Colson Whitehead
Inside
Poker
I Am
" In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live. "
Colson Whitehead
Average
Those
Who
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Railroad
You
America
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Trying
Kind
Me
" 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
Race
Ideas
Feel
" 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'. "
Colson Whitehead
Horror
Village
Voice
" There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there. "
Colson Whitehead
Bad
Find
Good
" I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour. "
Colson Whitehead
Writing
Black
Book
" People don't like it when you compare the miracle of childbirth to writing a book, but I think there is some overlap in the two because they are both pure agony. "
Colson Whitehead
Think
Writing
You