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All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

Paul Beatty

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Paul Beatty
Age: 63
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Feel
Feels
Angst
Tied
Ancient
Making
Stuff
Art

More quotes by Paul Beatty

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I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
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I think, and a lot of that has to do with where I grew up in California [status] isn't something I think about that much.
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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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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 try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
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People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
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Sometimes I highjack memories. Sometimes I switch them around. Sometimes they're just in the background, like some little bass note. Those things have carried me through, especially when I first started writing. They're still there, but more in the distance these days.
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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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Well, it's not all the same, but there are a lot of parallels. I'm not sure how to answer [on psychology background], but I think when I was studying psychology I had a professor and a friend who would talk about process all the time. Your process, his process, the group's process. There's some carryover from that discussion to my creative wor
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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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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.
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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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If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
Paul Beatty
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I just rode cross-country and the thing I noticed is just how afraid everyone is, and how nervous and scared and angry people are. From my point of view, I don't think it's all necessarily justified, but I think that's easy for me to say.
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Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.
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I remember going to see Amiri Baraka. It wasn't actually too long before he died. He said, You've got to write to change the world! I was like, Not me, no, no, no, no.
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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.
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I'm very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.
Paul Beatty
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There are things I don't like, like sitting at the head of the class. It makes me uncomfortable. I'll do it in a seminar if I have to, but with a workshop, I try to put myself in the circle somewhere. Because that hopefully frees up some people by making somebody else sit at the nominal head of the table.
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My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
Paul Beatty