It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life.
AL ALVAREZHe pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.
More Al Alvarez Quotes
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Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.
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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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Divorce transforms habit into drama.
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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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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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The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.
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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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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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Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.
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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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When you make a bet, you’re saying something.
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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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Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it’s a kind of risky trade.
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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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I’m good at reading people.
AL ALVAREZ






