Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters. "

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

" Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator. "

Colson Whitehead

Write

Voice

" 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. "

" I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A lot of early Misfits song titles are inspired by old B-movies, which were my Popeye's spinach when I was a kid. "

" 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. "

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

Colson Whitehead

Important

Said

" Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy. "

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

" The movie 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' was a sacred text in my household. "

" 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

" 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. "

" I write at home. I like to be able to take a nap, watch TV, make a sandwich, and if I wake up and don't feel like working, I'm not going to bang my head on my desk all day: I'll go out and do something else. "

" The contemporary casino is more than a gambling destination: it is a multifarious pleasure enclosure intended to satisfy every member of the family unit. "

" 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. "

" I wanted to be one of these multidisciplinary critics who is doing music one day, TV the next, and books the next. "

Colson Whitehead

Books

Day

" A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise. "

" 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

" '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. "

" In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes. "

" 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

" I'm always trying to switch voices and genres. "

" In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it's so evocative. You think it's a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was. "