Colson Whitehead

Having a wife and kids drove home the brutal reality of the slave system for me - the price it exacted on families. On the other hand, whenever I despair over our history, I am brought back to hope, the hope that things will get better, for my children. ”

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

I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig. ”

I'm raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on. ”

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. ”

Each book requires a different kind of treatment and structural gambit. ”

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. ”

The readership for 'Sag Harbor' was different from people who'd read me before - it was linear and realistic, not as strange as 'The Intuitionist.' Did they carry over to 'Zone One,' a story about zombies in New York? Some, some not. I'm used to people not caring about my other books. ”

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

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. ”