Hilton Als Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Hilton Als

  Teaching, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Baby, White, People

  Hilton Als (2013). “White Girls”, p.224, McSweeney's

  11 Copy quote

• The artist’s memory is a dangerous, necessary thing. Never disavow what you see and remember-it’s your brilliant stock-in-trade: remembering, and making something out of it. Artists remember the world as it is, first, because you have to know what it is you’re reinventing; that’s a rule, perhaps the only one: being cognizant of your source material.

  Hilton Als

  Memories, Artist, World

  12 Copy quote

• I'm a draftsperson. And also, I really respond to love.

  Hilton Als

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Beautiful, Country, Song

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Beautiful, Thinking, New Orleans

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• I was so well loved by my mother that if people have any expectations of me I really don't notice because I'm hardest on myself.

  Hilton Als

  Mother, Expectations, People

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  11 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Inspiration, Form, Pure

  Interview with Lily Tomlin, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

• One of the things I noticed when I worked at Vibe was that backstage at a fashion show, they always referred to the black models as "black girls." I thought, "They never say 'white girls.'

  Hilton Als

  Girl, Fashion, White

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Long, People, Enough

  "A Pryor Love". www.newyorker.com. September 13, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Falling In Love, Powerful, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Challenges, Listening, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

  9 Copy quote

• People have a copyright on their own life.

  Hilton Als

  People, Copyright

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Black And White, Artist, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Memories, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Thinking, Painting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Art, Artist, Western

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Writing, Mean, Imagination

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Way, Forget

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Hilton Als

  Spiritual, Fashion, Feels

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• 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!

  Hilton Als

  Reading, Challenges, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• There were so few black men who were successful and who successfully conveyed black male fear - how America can make you feel crazy, and how America can create interesting levels of contradiction.

  Hilton Als

  Crazy, Successful, Men

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Crazy, Thinking, Feels

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I really don't think we should dismiss a book because we feel messed about intellectually. Or emotionally. That's the writer's job!

  Hilton Als

  Jobs, Book, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Book, Names, Musical

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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