I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.

A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When they find out it's not, they feel a little disappointed. So I thought, What if it was a literal underground train network traveling from state to state, with each state it goes through representing a different opportunity or danger?

When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.

I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I've finished a book and it's a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination.

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.

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

As I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work.