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" 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

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

" Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel. "

" 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. "

" I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint. "

Colson Whitehead

Just

Feel

" I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before. "

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

Colson Whitehead

American

Culture

" 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

Work

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

" I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality. "

" 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

Time

College

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" If you want to understand America, it's slavery. "

" The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well. "

" 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. "

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

" I like questions that tee me up to make weird jokes, frankly. "

Colson Whitehead

Questions

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "