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" I don't think that there are many, many strong, black male role models who provide a certain kind of really American, Southern-based comfort that Madea grows out of. She's a signpost in our Obama world of traditional Christian values. "

Hilton Als

Strong

American

Black

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" If you want to take writing on, you should pay writing the respect it deserves, which is to say, reading it. "

" If I feel like I haven't really tapped into the essence of the story when I do an assignment, I may revisit it on my own, and that's when I feel freer to add my imagination. But I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy. "

" I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself. "

" I am always attracted to people who are not myself but are. "

Hilton Als

Always

I Am

" I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting? "

" I never feel like I've done anything. Swear to God. I'm not kidding. So it's always a surprise when somebody asks me to do anything. "

" I think I'm just generally more interested in figuration than abstraction. I think that painting abstraction often feels like painting colors to me, whereas portraits always feel like something connected. I like the exchange, the collaborative aspect of sitter and subject for sure. "

" There is not enough time for anything, ever. "

" Eminem was someone that I discovered I liked, largely because of his relationship to language and to his mother. "

" I'm attracted to people who work their little plot of land and cultivate it and cultivate it. "

" I think that you don't really want to write a book that doesn't really move people and doesn't get them to think. "

" One of the things I liked about writing for a magazine was a kind of anonymity. When you do books, it's different than magazine pieces because you become a 'figure.' "

" I believe that one reason I began writing essays - a form without a form, until you make it - was this: you didn't have to borrow from an emotionally and visually upsetting past, as one did in fiction, apparently, to write your story. "

" I'm one of those crazy people who have to write every day. Otherwise, I feel really sort of despondent, and it's because I don't feel very happy about not learning. "

" I think one of the things that started to hinder Baldwin as an artist later on was that he became really aware of power, so he wanted it, too. But if you look at the work before that, before 'The Fire Next Time' put him on the cover of 'Time Magazine,' it was much more intimate and a much more internal conversation. "

" Broadway is not about surprises. It's about rewarding the putrid, formulaic crap that makes Broadway Broadway. "

" Of course a magazine is shaped by its editor, and each editor is different. "

" It's very hard to find artists in the history of western art who don't make portraiture ideological in some way. "

" Although the civil-rights movement did a lot to change how black life was dramatized on the American stage in the fifties and sixties, white composers and lyricists often still rely on familiar tropes when it comes to representing black women in musicals. "

" When you work at a magazine, you have to tell the truth. When you're not working in that format, it's fun to see where your mind takes you when the dictates have nothing to do with anyone but yourself. "

" Racism seduces us with its desire to categorize, shutting out the living and breathing and 'different' world all around us. "

" It's dollars before art in Hollywood. "

" I love writing. Writing has been very good to me. "

Hilton Als

Writing

Very

" My mother reveres artists, and my sister and I have inherited her love of art and the stories about its creation. "

" Black excellence is a thing. People - from Beyonce Knowles to Venus and Serena Williams to folks you haven't heard of - are into it. It's less a movement than a standard: believers set the bar high not only for themselves but also for others who share their vision, especially when it pertains to black history, stories, and style. "

" I have not seen 'The Lion King.' I don't do black folklore. And I'm black. "

" I envy poets because nobody ever asks them if it's true or false. "