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.
Colson WhiteheadRead
I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Each book serves as a remedy or contrast to the previous one.
Colson Whitehead expresses the idea that with each new book he writes, he aims to create something that counters or challenges the themes of his last work. This approach highlights the importance of diversity and growth in an artist's output, suggesting that art should evolve and reflect different facets of the human experience.
Themes
BooksWritingArtCreativityEvolution
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about literature, I highlighted Colson Whiteheadβs quote to illustrate the importance of innovation in storytelling.
More from Colson Whitehead
All quotes βI 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.
Colson WhiteheadRead
In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.
Colson WhiteheadRead
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.
Colson WhiteheadRead
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.
Colson WhiteheadRead
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 WhiteheadRead
Similar quotes
I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet!
Robert DuvallRead
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.
John BergerRead
The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.
Mike NicholsRead
Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is.
Jeff BuckleyRead
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.
Martin AmisRead