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Hilton Als Biography

Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine. He is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.

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Hilton Als Quotes

Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time?

Challenges, Like, Listening, Same, Time, Want

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

Falling In Love, Love, People, Powerful

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

Form, Forms, Inspiration, Pure, Rarely

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they're babies.

Babies, Baby, Care, People, Punish, White

I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names
subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc.

Book, Come, Like, Musical, Names, Themes

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.

Aspect, Exchange, Feels, Figuration, Painting, Thinking

I think you're not really teaching anyone unless you're learning yourself.

Teaching, Thinking, Learning, Unless, Think

People are quick to make monuments of anything they live long enough to control.

Control, Enough, Live, Long, Make, People

Recalling, for me, is a great way of living, so not to forget.

Forget, Living, Recalling, Way

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.

Crazy, Feels, Imaginatively, Subject, Think, Thinking

I think it's cultural racism more than anything, which dovetails with actual racism, but the cultural racism to me is even more shocking.

Cultural, Racism, Shocking, Thinking

Every time I put a collection together I'd scrap it because there was no "meaning," until I wrote about the two black men - friends - in the beginning of the book. So much of their experience was ABOUT trying to find friends in the authors
artists I wrote about - subjects that were
are a source of comfort, somehow, since none of them "fit," either

Artist, Book, Friends, Men, Scrap, Source

Who says reading should be easy? Shouldn't it challenge you as hard sometimes as love. Maybe "hard" is not the right word in this context. Ha!

Challenge, Challenges, Hard, Maybe, Reading, Sometimes

I think Northern California is the most beautiful place on earth. And I adore New Orleans, but there's something about the air in SF, for instance. It changes from moment to moment, like one's thoughts.

Beautiful, Earth, New Orleans, Northern, Orleans, Thinking

I'm very interested in the question of how we perceive something, how consciousness goes from one thing, like looking at you in your black hat to what it might mean to my imagination and how I would draw that or write that, how I would subjectify you? It's something that is endlessly interesting to me.

Imagination, Interesting, Like, Mean, Question, Writing

Great sadness can be off putting, hard to comprehend, especially if it hasn't been your experience. It's amazing for me to know now that AIDS, for instance, is something a lot of people don't "get," whereas it entirely shaped my social life since the time I was twenty until I was almost forty.

Aids, Comprehend, Entirely, People, Sadness, Twenties

People approach people of color with preconceived ideas. I don't think this is just restricted to white people, but I think that lots of black and white artists, when race is a subject matter, they put race or the ideology around race first. They don't see the person and the complications of the human being.

Black And White, Artist, Thinking, Human, Approach, Think

I don't know what makes fashion cruel, except I feel nothing but spiritual depletion around it. There's nothing enriching, spiritually.

Cruel, Fashion, Feels, Nothing, Spiritual, Spiritually

I feel like there are so few girls in New York like that anymore, who are not focused on getting a man with money.

Anymore, Focused, Girl, Like, Men, New York

Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Citizen is Rankine's Spoon River Anthology, an epic as large and frightening and beautiful as the country and various emotional states that produced it.

Beautiful, Country, Frightening, Racism, Song, States

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