I want to keep growing as a writer. I find myself doing unexpected projects and sort of challenging my idea of where… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
These days I find myself wanting to avoid being pigeon-holed, ghettoized, held in a different category than other authors. And when people… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Part of any book is establishing the rules at the end of the world. My first book, 'The Intuitionist,' takes place in… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy. — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
People don't like it when you compare the miracle of childbirth to writing a book, but I think there is some overlap… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Most people say, "Show, don't tell," but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them. — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you’ve got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
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… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
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.… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I'm not really up on what's new. I'm still listening to Run DMC twenty-five years later. In the same way that the… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
When it comes to how the slaves treat each other: If you've been brutalized all your life - if you have seen… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully,… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I want to keep growing as a writer. I find myself doing unexpected projects and sort of challenging my idea of where I am… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Every Tuesday, James Fulton (and later, Orville Lever) stood in the downstairs drawing room and lectured on the intricacies of his science. Lectured on… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I started writing in the '90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be. Cora” — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The worst sort of scoundrels took up the chase. Drunkards, incorrigibles, poor whites who didn’t even own shoes delighted in this opportunity to scourge… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“its terms? Homer watched her as she dressed, like a valet who had waited on her since the cradle. “I’m caught,” Cora said. “You… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
These days I find myself wanting to avoid being pigeon-holed, ghettoized, held in a different category than other authors. And when people ask me… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Part of any book is establishing the rules at the end of the world. My first book, 'The Intuitionist,' takes place in an alternative… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters. — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
