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" 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.' "

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" 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. "

Hilton Als

Black

American

Freedom

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

Hilton Als

Think

Story

" 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. "

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

" Women have an ability to be still in a way men don't. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I love Andre Leon Talley as a person. "

" I used to think that the feeling of alienation that I would have was just me, but I realise that it's also a symptom of the modern world. "

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

" I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" In the contemporary world, artists are almost entirely self-referential. "

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

" I think that Tyler Perry's genius really has been to tap into the domestic market. He knows what his audience is based on, having toured America for so long, and then giving them the blueprint for his films prior to the films coming out, and then the films have the built-in audience because they've seen it in theaters already. "

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

Hilton Als

Writing

Very

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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