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.
AL ALVAREZMass 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.
More Al Alvarez Quotes
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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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Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it’s a kind of risky trade.
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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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Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself.
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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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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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I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don’t get any patients.
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He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.
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When you make a bet, you’re saying something.
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I’m good at reading people.
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The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.
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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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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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Divorce transforms habit into drama.
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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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