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" I think that when I'm telling a story, I'm doing the best I can to tell the story as fully as I can, and if there are various fractures that happen in the story, then that's just the very thing that the story is as opposed to my looking for avenues of difference in one story. They just really do exist. For me, anyway. "

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" What I feel is there are certain demands that you have to satisfy in any piece of writing. When it's just for me, it's just for me, but if it's a piece for a particular publication, I know what they're going to ask for. "

Hilton Als

Going

Feel

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like. "

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

" Dramas about addiction can be exciting to watch. And then dispiriting. Exciting because degradation is fascinating to follow from the relative safety and smugness of an 'appropriate' life, and dispiriting because if all that sad mayhem can happen to this or that character, what's to keep it from happening to me or you? "

" I'm not one of those people who's against all-black productions of Tennessee Williams plays, but there are lot more complex and natural ways to bring people of color into the theater. "

Hilton Als

People

Natural

" My self encompasses a lot of different things. "

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

Hilton Als

Always

I Am

" In general, what we really want is a feeling when we read anything that the author has explored the territory as dutifully and as thoroughly as their spirit allows and as their heart allows. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I didn't like '12 Years a Slave' because it was playing to the Spielbergian model of redemption. "

" 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. "

" One of the things that's great about writing for a magazine is that every week you get to be a different person. You're writing different things all the time and not slogging along for years on something. "

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

" 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. "

" Nothing is more flattering for a writer than when someone knows your work. "

Hilton Als

Work

Nothing

" Boredom means you develop your own interior life. "

" I think writing is an act of remembrance, I think that Instagram is an act of remembrance, and I think curating a show is an act of memory, too. "

" 'Moonlight' undoes our expectations as viewers, and as human beings, too. As we watch, another movie plays in our minds: real-life footage of the many forms of damage done to black men, which can sometimes lead them to turn that hateful madness on their own kind, passing on the poison that was their inheritance. "

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

" 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. "

" American musicals are, for the most part, about boys, or boyish pursuits and aspirations - the fantasy of freedom and resolve - and those dreams have little to do with the reality of most black women's lives. "

" If you have a word of encouragement, you can do anything. "

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

" 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. "

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

Hilton Als

Writing

Very