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. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
When I’m working on a book, I try to do eight pages a week. That seems like a good amount. Less than that, I’m not getting a nice momentum, and more than that, I’m probably putting out too much crap. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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 what you have to write, and you’re supposed to keep moving. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Zone One’ comes out of me trying to work through some of my ideas about why, for me personally, zombies are scary. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
For me, the terror of the zombie is that at any moment, your friend, your family, you neighbor, your teacher, the guy at the bodega down the street, can be revealed as the monster they’ve always been. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
I was 7 years old when ‘Roots’ was first broadcast, and my parents gathered all us kids around the TV to learn about how we got here. But it wasn’t until I sat down and immersed myself in the research that I got the barest inkling of what it meant to be a slave. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
