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" I like questions that tee me up to make weird jokes, frankly. "
Colson Whitehead
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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
" If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed. "
Colson Whitehead
Write
Talking
Race
" I wanted to be one of these multidisciplinary critics who is doing music one day, TV the next, and books the next. "
Colson Whitehead
Next
Books
Day
" The movie 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' was a sacred text in my household. "
Colson Whitehead
High School
Rock
School
" 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
" 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. "
Colson Whitehead
Away
People
Thinking
" 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
" There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters. "
Colson Whitehead
Always
Some
Sophomore
" 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
Me
Art
Drawing
" 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
Brother
Friday
Movies
" 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
Children
History
Home
" I'm someone who just likes being in my cave and thinking up weird stuff. "
Colson Whitehead
Cave
Someone
Up
" There's not a lot of good TV. "
Colson Whitehead
TV
Good
Lot
" 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
Story
New York
Ideas
" 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
Book
Rules
Place
" 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
" 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 have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. "
Colson Whitehead
Inside
Poker
I Am
" The contemporary casino is more than a gambling destination: it is a multifarious pleasure enclosure intended to satisfy every member of the family unit. "
Colson Whitehead
Gambling
Family
Destination
" In college, I wrote maybe three short stories. "
Colson Whitehead
Short
Maybe
College
" You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people. "
Colson Whitehead
Down
People
Authority
" If the world's nations can set aside their petty bickering over religion, politics, and territory, certainly I can 'get that Olympic Spirit' and rise above my prejudices. "
Colson Whitehead
World
Rise Above
Religion
" Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third. "
Colson Whitehead
Monsters
Realism
Storytelling
" 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
" 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
Zombie
Poker
Book
" For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job. "
Colson Whitehead
Only
Tool
Right
" 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
Train
Party
Love
" I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters. "
Colson Whitehead
Create
World
Trying
" I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer. "
Colson Whitehead
Representative
Healer
Blackness