I’m raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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’. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
I do write about race a lot, but I don’t think writers – of any shade or background or whatever – have to write about certain subjects. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Zone One’ has one kind of an apocalypse, and ‘The Underground Railroad’ another. In both cases, the narrators are animated by a hope in a better place of refuge – in the last surviving human outpost, Up North. Does it exist? They can only believe. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
I started writing in the ’90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what a black writer has to do. I didn’t have the burden of representation. Colson Whitehead Read Quote
