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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. "

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" 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

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

Hilton Als

Work

Nothing

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

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

" 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 love Andre Leon Talley as a person. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Hilton Als

Always

I Am

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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'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

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

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

Hilton Als

Writing

Very

" 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 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. "

" People have a copyright on their own life. "

Hilton Als

People

Own

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

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

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