Paul Beatty Quotes

Quotes about:

• All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

  Paul Beatty

  Art, Stuff, Ancient

  48 Copy quote

• If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

  Paul Beatty

  Funny, Life, Humor

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Numbers, Reason

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't write to put it in a drawer, I hope that people see it.

  Paul Beatty

  Writing, People, Drawers

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Love, Simple, Two

  Paul Beatty (2008). “Slumberland: A Novel”, Bloomsbury USA

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Trying, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

  Paul Beatty

  Rights, Race, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Memories, Distance, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Mean, Guy, Decision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

  Paul Beatty

  Race, Capture

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe I'm just sensitive to that person who's on the outside.

  Paul Beatty

  Sensitive, Persons

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .

  Paul Beatty

  Too Much, Pressure

  7 Copy quote

• It makes me think about how you hear these young people say, "I see you, man." Or even if you go and watch some basketball game over the summer and the announcer goes, "I see you," and you see that player smile. You know what I mean? That thing of just being recognized, especially when you do a little subtle thing. I don't know.

  Paul Beatty

  Basketball, Summer, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Buzz, Mainstream, Apathetic

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Basketball, Teacher, Attitude

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

  Paul Beatty

  Thinking, Nothing New

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Thinking, Race, Way

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Beatty

  Thinking, California, Grew Up

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's just never the same. At least for me.It's probably because it's just who I am, I never know what that [truth] is. It's so momentary to go, "Oh, yeah, that's true." That's a fundamental starting point for me - to figure out what's true from moment to moment to moment.

  Paul Beatty

  Who I Am, Fundamentals, Moments

  4 Copy quote

• Contradictions make people feel off. They'll say, "Hey, you just said this and now this person is doing that, how is that possible?"

  Paul Beatty

  People, Hey, Contradiction

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.

  Paul Beatty

  Writing, Thinking, Teach

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  New York, Sleep, Cities

  Paul Beatty (2016). “The Sellout”, p.136, Oneworld Publications

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Talking, Should Have

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Trying, Musician

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.

  Paul Beatty

  Writing, Fiction, Stuff

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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