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" If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way. "

Colson Whitehead

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" Stephen King in general, as well as films of the apocalypse from the '70s, had a big influence on 'Zone One.' "

Colson Whitehead

" There's not a lot of good TV. "

Colson Whitehead

" If you go to a big publishing house, editorial aside, it's completely white. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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

" Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" 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

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

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved. "

Colson Whitehead

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

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

" 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

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

Colson Whitehead

" Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That's my aim and what I see as my mission. "

Colson Whitehead

" I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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. "

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 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

" 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

" I like to explore different ideas of race, how the concept of race has evolved in the country. It's one thing I enjoy talking about, but I don't feel compelled to talk about it. "

Colson Whitehead

" 'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it. "

Colson Whitehead

" You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people. "

Colson Whitehead

" I always try to mix it up with each book - changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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

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

Colson Whitehead

" 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

" What isn't said is as important as what is said. "

Colson Whitehead

" 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