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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. "

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" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

Best

Small

Nature

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

Colson Whitehead

American

Culture

" 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. "

" A lot of early Misfits song titles are inspired by old B-movies, which were my Popeye's spinach when I was a kid. "

" I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer. "

" Generally, I walk around in a glum mood. "

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

Colson Whitehead

Questions

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

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

Colson Whitehead

Write

Voice

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

" The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well. "

" I'm always trying to switch voices and genres. "

" 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. "

" 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! "

Colson Whitehead

Work

" 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. "

" A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working. "

" A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise. "

" 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

Weird

American

" 'Zone One' comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary. "

Colson Whitehead

Trying

Why

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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