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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Hilton Als

You

Work

Mind

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

Hilton Als

Work

Nothing

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Julius Eastman is the kind of American genius not enough people know about. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My self encompasses a lot of different things. "

" It's dollars before art in Hollywood. "

" Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure. "

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

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

Hilton Als

Always

I Am

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "