Quotes from Colson Whitehead

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well.

I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality.

If the world's nations can set aside their petty bickering over religion, politics, and territory, certainly I can 'get that Olympic Spirit' and rise above my prejudices.

As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out.

It's always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher - readers! - who are going to appreciate them.

If you go to a big publishing house, editorial aside, it's completely white.

People don't like it when you compare the miracle of childbirth to writing a book, but I think there is some overlap in the two because they are both pure agony.

In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live.

The movie 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' was a sacred text in my household.

I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me.

In fifth grade, we did 10 minutes on slavery and 40 minutes on Abraham Lincoln, and in 10th grade you might do 10 minutes on the civil rights era and 40 minutes on Martin Luther King, and that's it.

Access to information, to music or any kind of culture, is getting faster and faster and more streamlined. At each juncture, people are thrown into tumult and have to adapt or die.

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes.

'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it.

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.

A lot of early Misfits song titles are inspired by old B-movies, which were my Popeye's spinach when I was a kid.

It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.

I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint.

I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters.

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.

Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third.

For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.