Colson Whitehead Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Colson Whitehead:

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

Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.

Colson Whitehead

Growing up as a product of the black civil-rights movement, I had a lot of different models for black weirdness, whether it's Richard Pryor or James Baldwin or Jimmy Walker.

Colson Whitehead

In '82 and '83, that was the rise of the VCR. Every Friday, my brother and I would go to Crazy Eddie's - which was a video store in Manhattan - and rent five horror movies. And that's basically what we did, basically, for three years. Becoming social misfits.

Colson Whitehead

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

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

Colson Whitehead

I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French.

Colson Whitehead

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

You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people.

Colson Whitehead

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

Colson Whitehead

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

If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed.

Colson Whitehead

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.

Colson Whitehead

Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

Once I got to college, it seemed that the Hamptons were a little bit too posh for me and didn't represent the kind of values I was embracing in my late teens. So, I didn't go out there, except to visit my parents, for a long time. And then, after 9/11, I discovered it was a nice, mellow place to hang out.

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

If self-absorption, vague yearnings, and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins, then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat.

Colson Whitehead

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.

Colson Whitehead

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.

Colson Whitehead

I like to explore different ideas of race, how the concept of race has evolved in the country. It's one thing I enjoy talking about, but I don't feel compelled to talk about it.

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

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.

Colson Whitehead

I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive.

Colson Whitehead

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

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

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!

Colson Whitehead

I use New York to talk about home, but the ideas in 'Colossus' could be transferred to other cities. The story about Central Park is really about the first day of spring in any park. The Coney Island chapter is really about beaches and summer and heat waves.

Colson Whitehead

A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working.

Colson Whitehead

'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.

Colson Whitehead

I'm someone who just likes being in my cave and thinking up weird stuff.

Colson Whitehead

Some books are well-received with critics; other books sell.

Colson Whitehead

I was sort of a miserable teenager.

Colson Whitehead

I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside.

Colson Whitehead

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.

Colson Whitehead

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