A Quote by Zazie Beetz

I think what happens with a lot of writing and art is that specificity ends up being relatable while universality becomes vague. — © Zazie Beetz
I think what happens with a lot of writing and art is that specificity ends up being relatable while universality becomes vague.
After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.
I'm not as worried about the process of writing, simply because I think I've got that one down, you know? I think I know what brings specificity to these ideas, what brings specificity to the genre elements, or anything else, and it's personal emotions.
So I was in America and I thought I'll stick around while I'm here and just see what happens. The next film I did was High Art, so I guess it started with a sort of vague idea but really just a fantasy.
I think the art fair is very much a form of urbanism. I think something really happens to the cities when such a fair happens. The city becomes an exhibition; it's amazing.
I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.
perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.
Do not set out to make Mexican art, or American, Chinese, or Russian art. Think in terms of universality.
A lot of Viners do more relatable stuff, but I try to stay away from that. I try to maybe take a relatable situation and Bach it up.
I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.
I think that's an obligation you have, to give back no matter what happens. It actually ends up being easier when you're young than when you become successful. Suddenly you realize you've gone into a whole other realm of philanthropy, from just being a volunteer to being this person that dedicates buildings and saves lots of children in some faraway place.
I think I prefer writing books because the work of art begins and ends with you - it's easier to know if you're doing it right, as opposed to writing a play and then waiting around for somebody else to complete it.
I think references, where they fit organically, are great. It's great to do a show that's real and relatable, and so much of what is real, is using real things and instances that are specific. Specificity is the best tool you can have, as a writer.
There's a specificity of language that's required in Shakespeare that most drama students in England deal with - a specificity of language that is somehow not as clear in a lot of American schools.
Maybe this is a utopian view of art but I do believe that art can function as a vehicle, that it isn't just a cultural pursuit, something that happens in art galleries. Unless art is linked to experience and the fear and joy of that, it becomes mere icing on the cake.
Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity!
We all are influenced by things and copy things, but often where there is a certain level of copying, only the surface value ends up being reproduced and that becomes thinner and thinner. I feel like a lot of appropriation suffers from that.
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