Latest Hilton Als Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• 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

• I used to always love taking photos, but I would always give a camera away to someone else. Now I don't give the camera away anymore. It also takes a long time to develop a visual style, and I think that the things that I was imitating were people I love, like Judy Linn or Gerald Turner, and then it slowly started to become more myself.

  Hilton Als

  Thinking, Long, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

• 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

• 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.

  Hilton Als

  Sadness, People, Twenties

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• I had to re-write "Philosophy" a lot. It was more obscure than what's in the book now, even! Some things I had to go back to and excise my former self, who was even more dense. I think you should teach whatever you want, Brian! That's the point of books like White Girls, to help free our thoughts!

  Hilton Als

  Girl, Philosophy, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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

  Hilton Als

  Teaching, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

  Hilton Als

  Book, Artist, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Hilton Als

  Girl, New York, Men

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

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

  Hilton Als

  Thinking, Racism, Shocking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

• 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.

• I don't make a lot of money, but I get to have freedom.

  Hilton Als

  Lots Of Money

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

• 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.