Quote

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.

Paul Beatty

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Beatty
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Person
Professor
Thing
Professors
Trying
Psychology
Always
Group
Groups
Bring
Away
Persons
Mindful

More quotes by Paul Beatty

Image
There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
There are always so many things happening [to us] at one time. We read Isherwood's A Single Man in class, and we had to ask: How is he talking about all this stuff: teaching, being lonely, all his memories, all at the same time? He's telling us: This is where my head is at, let me be straightforward. And of course, try be artful about it.
Paul Beatty
Image
I'm very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.
Paul Beatty
Image
My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
Paul Beatty
Image
I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
Paul Beatty
Image
I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].
Paul Beatty
Image
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
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, Contradiction is how we operate.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
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.
Paul Beatty
Image
People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
Paul Beatty