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I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.

Paul Beatty

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Paul Beatty
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Littles
Little
Healthier
Happier
California
Probably
Maybe

More quotes by Paul Beatty

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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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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
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If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
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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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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
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My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, Contradiction is how we operate.
Paul Beatty
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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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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
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People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
Paul Beatty
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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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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.
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.
Paul Beatty
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I've also never written anything really in LA.
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.
Paul Beatty
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I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
Paul Beatty
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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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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.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty