In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets’ nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.
AL ALVAREZIn the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.
More Al Alvarez Quotes
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Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it’s a kind of risky trade.
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Divorce transforms habit into drama.
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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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When neither high purpose nor the categorical imperatives of religion will do, the only argument against suicide is life itself.
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The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively.
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I absolutely don’t believe in anything. Full stop. Including luck.
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No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.
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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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The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.
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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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Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation.
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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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Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself.
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Since what happened in them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.
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The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money.
AL ALVAREZ