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If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

Paul Beatty

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Paul Beatty
Age: 63
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
World
Ironic
Irony
Door
Doors
Humor
Stage
Trap
Funny
Operate
Life
Traps

More quotes by Paul Beatty

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It's so hard to say what you really mean. For any number of reasons: to protect yourself, or if you just can't find the words.
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There are many similarities between Germans and blacks. The nouns themselves are loaded with so much historical baggage it's impossible for anyone to be indifferent to the simple mention of either group. We're two insightful people looking for reasons to love ourselves and let's not forget we both love pork and wear sandals with socks.
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I read an interview with a Japanese freestyle jazz musician once, and he said something like, Everything I'm going to tell you is not going to be true. He's not saying, I'm trying to lie to you. But he's kind of saying that you can never say what something really is.
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I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
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I talk about folding it in often with Althea, my girlfriend. She's getting her doctoral degree at Berkeley and she talks about how even when writing these very academic, and, for the most part, serious papers there's just so much going on in her head and heart, and it's a reminder that there's a reason that she's studying these things.
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Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.
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I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
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I had a student once come up to me and we were talking about this incident, and, of course, I never had the right thing to say. But later on, I realized I should have said: Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.
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I co-taught a seminar called Small Group Processes with my professor. I learned so much from it, so much about myself, about groups, how this stuff works. I bring all that stuff to teaching now.
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I don't try to be satirical. I just try to get what's in my head on the page. And that part is hard for me to do. It takes a long, long time to make it poetic, somewhat essayistic.
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If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.
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Sometimes I would get frustrated, I'd think, You know, this is a good book, how come no one is paying attention to it? So it's nice to have some recognition.
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We don't act the same in every situation. Things bleed into all kinds of other things, from behavior to identity.
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There's this line between propriety and how we really speak and how we really think. And I'm just trying to have fun with that stuff.
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The anger and fear are so global. And of course, we live where we live and there's a hierarchy to who is worth what. It's been going on for a long, long time.
Paul Beatty
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My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
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There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.
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The other thing [my psychology professor] said to me was that I was always very mindful of the person who was away from the group, that I was always trying to bring them in.
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I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .
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That's such a great book [Bloods]. That's a perfect way to articulate this thing that we're talking about. Just because someone is a black general, doesn't mean this person is going to have a certain outlook on it.
Paul Beatty