When neither high purpose nor the categorical imperatives of religion will do, the only argument against suicide is life itself.
AL ALVAREZThe real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively.
More Al Alvarez Quotes
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Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights.
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To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully.
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When you make a bet, you’re saying something.
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You pause and attend: the heart beats in your chest; outside, the trees are thick with new leaves, a swallow dips over them, the light moves, people are going about their business.
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It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it’s funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.
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Hold’em is a game of calculated aggression. If your cards are good enough for you to call a bet, they are good enough to raise with.
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Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist.
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in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.
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In the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.
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The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.
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The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money.
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Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself.
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I absolutely don’t believe in anything. Full stop. Including luck.
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Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.
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Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation.
AL ALVAREZ