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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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Paul Beatty
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Live
Going
Hierarchy
Long
Global
Time
Anger
Worth
Courses
Course
Fear

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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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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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I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .
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It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.
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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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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'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].
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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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My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, Contradiction is how we operate.
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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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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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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 healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
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I've also never written anything really in LA.
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I'm very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.
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All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.
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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.
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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