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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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Bloods
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More quotes by Paul Beatty

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I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
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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 try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
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If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .
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I've also never written anything really in LA.
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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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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I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].
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 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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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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All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.
Paul Beatty