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" I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig. "

Colson Whitehead

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" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always an errand you can do along there, whether it's picking up contacts or buying poker chips. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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? "

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

" Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" Each book requires a different kind of treatment and structural gambit. "

Colson Whitehead

" I knew that a zombie book would not particularly appeal to some of my previous readers, but it was artistically compelling, and being able to do a short nonfiction book about poker was really fun and great. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

" As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out. "

Colson Whitehead

" 'Zone One' has one kind of an apocalypse, and 'The Underground Railroad' another. In both cases, the narrators are animated by a hope in a better place of refuge - in the last surviving human outpost, Up North. Does it exist? They can only believe. "

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

" Having a wife and kids drove home the brutal reality of the slave system for me - the price it exacted on families. On the other hand, whenever I despair over our history, I am brought back to hope, the hope that things will get better, for my children. "

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead