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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Colson Whitehead

Away

People

Thinking

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" Most of my books have always worked through juxtaposition, jumping through different point of views and time. "

" I was always into comic books and horror stories and a huge consumer of pop culture. And then I worked for awhile for 'The Village Voice'. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 'Zone One' comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary. "

Colson Whitehead

Trying

Why

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

Colson Whitehead

Just

Feel

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

" 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. "

" I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer. "

" 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. "

" Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third. "

" 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 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

Weird

American

" I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. "

" The Declaration of Independence is that sacred American text so full of meaning and purpose and yet quite empty if you examine it and pull it apart because the words 'All Men' exclude a vast number of citizens. "

" 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

Black

" 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. "

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

" '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. "

" 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. "