Colson Whitehead Quotes

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

As a novelist, you have to realise that the novel and the film have to live separate lives. They're just different, like your kids, even if they look alike.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

I write novels and other things.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

A good writer knows that if her style and perceptions are really cooking, she can bring anything off. It's okay, of course, for novelists to depict bland, average families living bland, average lives in bland, average towns. But it isn't okay when those novelists don't outshine their bland, average subjects.

People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination.

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

The world of fiction is a sovereign world that comes to life in the author's head and follows the rules of art, of literature. And that is the major difference that is reflected in the form of the work, in its language and its plot. An author invents every aspect of a fiction, every detail.

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.