Colson Whitehead quotes

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them. (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

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

Colson Whitehead

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

Colson Whitehead

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

Colson Whitehead

The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.

Colson Whitehead

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

Colson Whitehead

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

Colson Whitehead

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.

Colson Whitehead

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Colson Whitehead

In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away realizing - not surprisingly - that many slave masters were sadists who spent a lot of time thinking up creative ways of hurting people. (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.

Colson Whitehead

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.

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 never know when I start out. You know, I sort of know what the ending is. I know where the characters always end up, and I usually have an image of the last page before I start. I'm a big outliner. But you can't know everything and you have to be open to discovery...

Colson Whitehead

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

Colson Whitehead

Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren't looking, alluring and ever out of reach.

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

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

Colson Whitehead

I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

Colson Whitehead

My compulsion to write the story was from seeing so many people go unpunished, and so many innocents' stories being untold... (Colson Whitehead)

I ask myself: Is the outlook of this book comic? Is it tragic? Is the story best served by a first person narrator who's telling his or her story? Is it best served by an omniscient narrator who can stand above and make connections about the characters and society and politics? Part of figuring out how to tell the story is tone and voice, the same way I'm picking characters and places.

Colson Whitehead