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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

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Paul Beatty
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
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More quotes by 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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People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty
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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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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 certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.
Paul Beatty
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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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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.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty
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My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
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.
Paul Beatty
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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.
Paul Beatty
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I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .
Paul Beatty
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I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
Paul Beatty
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It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.
Paul Beatty
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I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].
Paul Beatty
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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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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
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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.
Paul Beatty
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I forget how beautiful and calm California is. It's not so much about the place, but also the age that I came to the place and, well, other things. New York is hard.
Paul Beatty