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" I wanted to be one of these multidisciplinary critics who is doing music one day, TV the next, and books the next. "
Colson Whitehead
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" 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
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" In college, I wrote maybe three short stories. "
Colson Whitehead
Short
Maybe
College
" If self-absorption, vague yearnings, and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins, then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat. "
Colson Whitehead
Vague
Sense
Eternity
" In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes. "
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Days
Idea
" I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me. "
Colson Whitehead
Keep
Trying
Things
" 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 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
" 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
Rent
Years
Live
" 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'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
" A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise. "
Colson Whitehead
Premise
Books
Abstract
" 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 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
" 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
Looking
Funny
Mother
" I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive. "
Colson Whitehead
New
Native
New Yorkers
" 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
" What isn't said is as important as what is said. "
Colson Whitehead
Important
Said
" Growing up as a product of the black civil-rights movement, I had a lot of different models for black weirdness, whether it's Richard Pryor or James Baldwin or Jimmy Walker. "
Colson Whitehead
Growing Up
Up
Black
" '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 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
" Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy. "
Colson Whitehead
Good
Paranoia
People
" 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
" 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 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
" I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved. "
Colson Whitehead
I Am
Race
Sure
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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