No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.
AL ALVAREZSince 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.
More Al Alvarez Quotes
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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.
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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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Seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.
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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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The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money.
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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 neither high purpose nor the categorical imperatives of religion will do, the only argument against suicide is life itself.
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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.
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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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When you make a bet, you’re saying something.
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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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I’m good at reading people.
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Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.
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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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