Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I love writing. Writing has been very good to me. "
Hilton Als
Writing
Very
Me
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Learning
People
Crazy
" I have not seen 'The Lion King.' I don't do black folklore. And I'm black. "
Hilton Als
Folklore
Black
King
" I grew up in a largely black community during the '70s and '80s that scoffed at 'white' music. That music - folk, rock, some disco - was considered soulless, aberrant, just one more example of the Caucasian's desire to scream and yell and demand whatever their privilege and perpetual adolescence dictated they should demand. "
Hilton Als
Community
Black
Privilege
" 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
" Our wishes are our most reliable mirror, and the black-and-white movies I'm most drawn to are about artists who suffer because art is a noble thing; suffering is such a small price to pay for the imagination. "
Hilton Als
Suffering
Imagination
Art
" I'm attracted to people who work their little plot of land and cultivate it and cultivate it. "
Hilton Als
Plot
Land
Little
" People have a copyright on their own life. "
Hilton Als
People
Own
Copyright
" I didn't like '12 Years a Slave' because it was playing to the Spielbergian model of redemption. "
Hilton Als
Redemption
Slave
Years
" My self encompasses a lot of different things. "
Hilton Als
Things
Lot
Different
" I think someone like Khandi Alexander, who's now on 'Treme,' is one of the most extraordinary actresses I've seen in years. But she's dependent on someone brilliant like David Simon to realize that and to give her a forum. Tyler Perry's not interested in that kind of nuance because it doesn't sell. "
Hilton Als
Someone
Kind
She
" It's very hard to find artists in the history of western art who don't make portraiture ideological in some way. "
Hilton Als
Art
Find
Hard
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Think
Crazy
Story
" Eminem was someone that I discovered I liked, largely because of his relationship to language and to his mother. "
Hilton Als
Language
Relationship
Someone
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Move
You
Book
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Look
Work
Time
" I am always attracted to people who are not myself but are. "
Hilton Als
Always
Am
I Am
" I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old. "
Hilton Als
You
Feel
Day
" 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. "
Hilton Als
God
Feel
Done
" I think what we're attracted to on the page is something that is very difficult to do in life, which is to examine in what seems like a moment. To examine what we can't do in life very well, which is to be as present and accountable to what an experience is. That's why life is short and art is very long. "
Hilton Als
Moment
Art
Experience
" Broadway is not about surprises. It's about rewarding the putrid, formulaic crap that makes Broadway Broadway. "
Hilton Als
Rewarding
Surprises
Crap
" I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting? "
Hilton Als
Think
Writing
You
" My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone's really high-strung and trying to do the best they can. "
Hilton Als
Everyone
Best
Different
" I envy poets because nobody ever asks them if it's true or false. "
Hilton Als
Nobody
Envy
False
" Of course a magazine is shaped by its editor, and each editor is different. "
Hilton Als
Different
Shaped
Magazine
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Excellence
Style
Vision
" 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. "
Hilton Als
Change
Black
Women
" Julius Eastman is the kind of American genius not enough people know about. "
Hilton Als
Genius
American
Know
" If you want to take writing on, you should pay writing the respect it deserves, which is to say, reading it. "
Hilton Als
You
Pay
Reading
" I suppose that there are many novels that are set during the summer because it's a lonely time of year. Friends come and go, comfort comes and goes, which makes it a perfect time of year to indulge in melancholia. "
Hilton Als
Perfect
Friends
Comfort
" It's dollars before art in Hollywood. "
Hilton Als
Before
Hollywood
Dollars