Hilton Als Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

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

Hilton Als

#5. People have a copyright on their own life.

Hilton Als

#6. 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

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

Hilton Als

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

Hilton Als

#9. 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

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

Hilton Als

#11. 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

#12. 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

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

Hilton Als

#14. 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

#15. 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

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

Hilton Als

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

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

Hilton Als

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

Hilton Als

#24. 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