A lot of early Misfits song titles are inspired by old B-movies, which were my Popeye's spinach when I was a kid.
— Colson Whitehead
I enjoy thinking about how race plays out over the centuries, how technology evolves, how cities transform themselves. These subjects are present in some of my books and absent in others.
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.
If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed.
Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.
I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.
'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.
As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out.
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.
I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before.
Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.
In college, I wrote maybe three short stories.
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.
The contemporary casino is more than a gambling destination: it is a multifarious pleasure enclosure intended to satisfy every member of the family unit.
You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people.
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.
I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction.
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.
I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality.
Slavery was a violent, brutal, immoral system, and in accurately depicting how it worked, you have to include that, obviously. Or else you are lying.
I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.
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'.
I'm raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on.
There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters.
I never actually went anywhere when I was a journalist. I was a critic, and I just sort of got stuff in the mail and chatted about it.
I wanted to be one of these multidisciplinary critics who is doing music one day, TV the next, and books the next.
I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always an errand you can do along there, whether it's picking up contacts or buying poker chips.
In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it's so evocative. You think it's a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was.
Monsters are a storytelling tool, like domestic realism and close third.
I like to know how I'm supposed to feel about things. Just a little clue or hint.
I'm of that subset of native New Yorkers who can't drive.
I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college.
I live in Brooklyn. I moved here 14 years ago for the cheap rent. It was a little embarrassing because I was raised in Manhattan, and so I was a bit of a snob about the other boroughs.
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.
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.
There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there.
I like questions that tee me up to make weird jokes, frankly.
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.
In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live.
I'm always trying to switch voices and genres.
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.
In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes.
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 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.
There's not a lot of good TV.
I didn't know I was a zombie pedant until I started considering what from the zombie canon to keep in 'Zone One' and what to ignore.
I don't generally follow sports. At an early age, I discovered that nature had apportioned me only a small reserve of enthusiasm. Best to ration.
I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside.
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.
'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.
