Latest Colson Whitehead Quotes from Interviews

• I didn't have to do that much research to present a post-apocalyptic New York because I basically grew up in that New York. That old New York is gone, and that's one thing that's undiscoverable now but I explore in my fiction.

  Colson Whitehead

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• The thing I love about New York is getting lost but not worrying, just wandering and wandering, knowing that there's always a subway only ten blocks away in any direction. There's always a new neighborhood to discover, a new place to lose your bearings in, and yet however alien it seems you can escape. You can always get a cab. All of life's problems can be solved by hailing a cab.

  Colson Whitehead

  Block, Worry, Aliens

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• As I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work.

  Colson Whitehead

  Humorous, Book, Writing

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 baby-boomers in America were forcing '60s music and Motown down our throats, now people of my generation are forcing Tears For Fears and old Hip Hop upon others.

  Colson Whitehead

  Running, People, Hip Hop

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• I think each book has its own way of accommodating my concerns, whether it's about race, America, technology, the city.

  Colson Whitehead

  Book, Technology, Thinking

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• I think the world's big enough for all kinds of zombies. You can have yours and I can have mine. I think by going with slow zombies I maybe have been asserting my own kind of zombie snobbery, but I don't begrudge the youngsters their tackling, running, jumping zombies.

  Colson Whitehead

  Running, Thinking, Zombie

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm trying to keep it fresh for me. I'm just trying to not bore myself. And if I can do a detective novel, and if I can do a horror novel, then why do it again? To keep the work challenging I have to keep moving.

  Colson Whitehead

  Moving, Challenges, Trying

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• I think you're only post-racial when you stop asking if you're post-racial. When the Neanderthals finally stopped asking themselves if they were in a post-saber tooth society, that's when they were post-saber tooth.

  Colson Whitehead

  Pensar

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• Soy un escritor afroamericano, soy un escritor perezoso, soy un escritor al que le gusta ver The Wire, soy un escritor al que le gusta comer mucho filete.

  Colson Whitehead

  Lazy, Wire, American Writer

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.

  Colson Whitehead

  Writing, Kids, People

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• Twenty years ago, when I started writing, I didn't define myself as an African-American writer. And then you write books and you're focused on what's inside your books, and that kind of term is generally used on the outside, by the critical establishment.

  Colson Whitehead

  Libro, Escritura, Amable

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 if I'm a black writer, or just a writer who happens to be black, I tend to say that it's either a dumb question or a question which happens to be dumb.

  Colson Whitehead

  People, Dumb, Black

  Fuente: www.guernicamag.com

• Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone. It meant knowing you are property that could be sold to the highest bidder, of value only to continue to support the plantation economy.

  Colson Whitehead

  Children, Support, Together

  Fuente: www.oprah.com

• 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

  Herir, Pensar, Personas

  Fuente: www.oprah.com

• A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When they find out it's not, they feel a little disappointed. So I thought, What if it was a literal underground train network traveling from state to state, with each state it goes through representing a different opportunity or danger?

  Colson Whitehead

  Oportunidad, Pensamiento, Personas

  Fuente: www.oprah.com

• For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

  Colson Whitehead

  Slavery, Mess

  Fuente: www.oprah.com

• 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.

  Colson Whitehead

  Men, Independence, Purpose

  Fuente: www.macleans.ca

• When it comes to how the slaves treat each other: If you've been brutalized all your life - if you have seen your children sold or your mother beaten and raped and you have been tortured yourself - you are not going to be up for your best behaviour. Even in the 21st century, 100 people in the midst of terrible suffering are not going to be their best people.

  Colson Whitehead

  Madre, Hijos, Personas

  Fuente: www.macleans.ca

• The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

  Colson Whitehead

  Slavery, Not Sure

  Fuente: www.macleans.ca

• I can't say that you should extract this or that value from my books explicitly. They are up for interpretation. In terms of the obligation, I think we're all individuals on this planet, trying to scratch our way through the day, and if you're writing a book exposing atrocities in Rwanda or writing a murder mystery set in a mountain village, I think both ways of spending you time are valid and both books are probably fine to read.

  Colson Whitehead

  Libro, Escritura, Pensamiento

  Fuente: therumpus.net

• I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

  Colson Whitehead

  Libro, Escritura, Personas

  Fuente: therumpus.net

• In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there's still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn't change. It's just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn't affect what I write.

  Colson Whitehead

  Empleo, Libro, Escritura

  Fuente: therumpus.net

• 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 difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.

  Colson Whitehead

  Libro, Escritura, Pensamiento

  Fuente: therumpus.net

• I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?

  Colson Whitehead

  Couple, Procrastination, Ideas

  Fuente: therumpus.net

• I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.

  Colson Whitehead

  Jobs, Thinking, Typewriters

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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