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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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Paul Beatty
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Rights
Etc
Race
Relations
People
Civil
Slavery
Relation
Looked
Comfortable
Movement
Retrospectively

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There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.
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I've also never written anything really in LA.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
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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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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'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.
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My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, Contradiction is how we operate.
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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.
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If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
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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 very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.
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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 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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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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