Colson Whitehead Quotes

I finished 'The Hunger Games' trilogy, and I love most anything with zombies.

Readers really want to come back to an author; they do not want a one-book wonder. That is all very well, but to be career author, you have to be prepared to write one really good book and then write another really good book and keep feeding your readers. You build your audience over a long time.

My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there.

The first Amy Silver book was commissioned, and they were not books that came completely from me. They weren't necessarily the sort of books I read, and although I enjoyed doing them very much, and they were great training, I never felt completely comfortable in that genre.

Stephen King in general, as well as films of the apocalypse from the '70s, had a big influence on 'Zone One.'

Putting out a book is absolutely a lesson in vulnerability because it doesn't matter how much of an audience you have. Some people who have giant audiences can't sell books because those audiences don't feel like they need to give them their money.

I've never had a zombie eat a brain! I don't know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?

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!

The most important thing for me is realism. I don't like writing which does somersaults on the page, and I'm no great fan of the hard work literary novel.

'Library of Souls' is longer than 'Hollow City' by a considerable margin, but this time I was on the right track from the beginning, so I never had to start over. It took about 15 months, all told.

The success of 'Those Who Save Us' had an interesting effect on the writing of 'The Stormchasers.'

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 had an erroneous idea that writing a duology would be simpler than writing a trilogy because I would get to cut out the middle book. It turns out it was actually harder because 'Wildcard' became this combination of having to write a book two and three at the same time.

In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out.

I'm going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.

Because of 'World War Z' and 'The Walking Dead,' I can't pitch a modest little zombie film which is meant to be sociopolitical.

Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.

If a reader likes a particular author, they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kept up, then the reader shifts his loyalties.

It's been wonderful to hear so many excited and intelligent responses to 'Beautiful Children,' not only from reviewers but also from the people coming out to my readings.

Regency romances end in marriage; zombie stories end in the zombies being vanquished. 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' delivers both.

In zombie horror, the juxtaposition of the calm world of the living and the menace of the undead inspires terror. In zombie comedy, like 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' it is played for laughs.

I am a huge fan of Amitav Ghosh's work. I wish I could meet him.

My first book deal was for two Mark Genevich novels. I hadn't planned on writing a second Genevich novel, but I was contracted to do so, and so there I was being introduced as a crime writer.

My loyalty is to myself, actually. I don't know if it's to my readers.

'The Walking Dead' do such a great job with that world. It is real, but it's also otherworldly; it's strangely theatrical, and I suddenly did become quite invested in the whole zombie phenomenon.