“All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn't matter--expectation was such an… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings.” — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Once I got to college, it seemed that the Hamptons were a little bit too posh for me and didn't represent the… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“THE Andersons lived in a lovely clapboard house at the corner of Washington and Main, a few blocks past the hubbub of… — 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
For me, the terror of the zombie is that at any moment, your friend, your family, you neighbor, your teacher, the guy… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“...and for the second time that day he blesses the certainty of airports because he can always turn around and go someplace… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Everything in the garden is dying, that’s what time of year it is. The leaves blaze and desiccate in their dying before… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time. — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it? — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Weeks passed, but my Word-A-Day Calendar was stuck on "motherfucker.” — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Three months, I thought. In idle moments, I retreated into that early-summer dream of reinvention, when you set your eyes on September… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment.… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it.” — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Their lives had been an interminable loop of repeated gestures; now their existences were winnowed to this discrete and eternal moment.” — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
I usually have two or three ideas floating around. When I have free time, the one I end up thinking most about… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be… — Colson Whitehead Copy Share Image
Most of my books have always worked through juxtaposition, jumping through different point of views and time. — 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
