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" I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before. "
Colson Whitehead
Before
Antidote
Each
Related Quotes:
" I always try to mix it up with each book - changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me. "
Colson Whitehead
Work
Try
Me
" I'm always trying to switch voices and genres. "
Colson Whitehead
Trying
Voices
Genres
" Other people have hang-ups about what's literary or genre or whatever, and that's sort of not my problem. You're supposed to write what you have to write, and you're supposed to keep moving. "
Colson Whitehead
You
Moving
Write
" In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live. "
Colson Whitehead
Average
Those
Who
" I usually have two or three ideas floating around. When I have free time, the one I end up thinking most about is the one I end up pursuing. "
Colson Whitehead
Free
Three
Thinking
" 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
" '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
Railroad
Believe
Place
" I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive. "
Colson Whitehead
New
Native
New Yorkers
" 'Zone One' comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary. "
Colson Whitehead
Me
Trying
Why
" Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone. "
Colson Whitehead
Together
Children
Family
" 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
" 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've always had a love of cards, ever since I was a little kid. I think poker, as a system, describes the chaos of the world. Our sudden reversals, our freak streaks of fortune. The belief that the next hand can save you, and the inevitable failure of the next hand to save you. I think that describes my world view pretty well. "
Colson Whitehead
Think
View
World
" 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
" Some books are well-received with critics; other books sell. "
Colson Whitehead
Sell
Books
Critics
" What isn't said is as important as what is said. "
Colson Whitehead
Important
Said
" 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
King
You
Civil Rights
" Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator. "
Colson Whitehead
Me
Write
Voice
" I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved. "
Colson Whitehead
I Am
Race
Sure
" 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'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me. "
Colson Whitehead
Keep
Trying
Things
" 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
" 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
" I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint. "
Colson Whitehead
Like
Just
Feel
" I didn't know I was a zombie pedant until I started considering what from the zombie canon to keep in 'Zone One' and what to ignore. "
Colson Whitehead
Know
Started
Zombie
" You can't rush inspiration. "
Colson Whitehead
You
Rush
Inspiration
" I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction. "
Colson Whitehead
Horror
Movies
Science
" Write what you know. "
Colson Whitehead
Write
You
Know
" There's not a lot of good TV. "
Colson Whitehead
TV
Good
Lot
" 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