Paul Beatty Quotes
-
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
The thing is that it's always a constant reminder of how violent this country has been, always has been, you know. I'm still frustrated with these conversations: [Barack] Obama is black so that means this, that things are better, or it means that you voted for him because he's black.
→ -
I think everybody focuses on race, but it's about a ton of things, and I just see these things as all interrelated and all interwoven in a weird way.
→ -
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 work.
→ -
I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.
→ -
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.
→ -
It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.
→ -
In White Boy Shuffle, I combined my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Takemoto, who really saved me - I don't think I've ever told anyone this - and my first basketball coach, Mr. Shimizu, into one character. Something about the way they talked about things, and their attitudes, had a huge impact on me. Not that I necessarily agreed with them. It was important to me to just put them there to stay grounded.
→ -
All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.
→ -
Maybe I'm just sensitive to that person who's on the outside.
→ -
The Sellout is about friends and relatives who have touched me in real ways.
→ -
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.
→ -
I can't say that I love writing, but I do love the satisfaction that it gives me.
→ -
There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.
→ -
I'm very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.
→ -
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.
→ -
My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
→ -
I'm not very pious about anything, fortunately, but I'm skewering myself first. I'm skewering things that I care about and things that are important to me and then just my own foibles.
→ -
I don't write to put it in a drawer, I hope that people see it.
→ -
I've written a little bit in Germany.
→ -
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.
→ -
Like when you have the right title for something you're writing and you get lost - you can always go back to the title and go, "Yeah, that's what this is about."
→ -
People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
→ -
I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].
→ -
My British publisher has this independent press. It's pretty small; they actually won last year. And she's got this great energy, and she's fiercely independent, and you know this book was a hard sell. No one wanted to buy this book. But she did, and so it's paid off for her, I hope.
→ -
If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable. If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
→ -
If I'm in LA, I'm close to home, and that just brings up all these other things, good and bad. There is a reason why I am not there. That's what I have to remind myself of. But I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe. 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.
→ -
It's weird because there is progress somehow. But there's so much that just feels the same. How important is that rank? How important is it that I am allowed to make these decisions? What does that really mean? What is progress? Is it progress that a black guy gets to push a button for the nuclear bomb? Is that progress? Maybe, I don't know.
→ -
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.
→