Hilton Als Quotes

I feel like I'm a much better person when I'm developing my imagination and my innocence and my vulnerability. I like that version of me better than the version where I'm just working on my analytical mind.

I have learned so much about myself. I have re-discovered that little boy who had the hunger to create, which I think I had lost.

I've been so in my moment about my life.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

It is well to be alone. It fertilizes the creative impulse.

Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.

A writer needs a life of introspection.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

I think about my journey sometimes.

I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.

Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.

Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

I'm no romantic, surfing, California boy. I like reading, writing, philosophizing. Scheming. I've been doing some exploration of the inner space.

I just want to live each moment, but it's kind of hard to do that when you are asked to analyze yourself constantly. But it's also good in that you are forced to think about things that you don't ordinarily think about. I think it's strange.

I really enjoy when I'm asked questions that leap from the physical world and the material world into our hearts.

I don't want to get into autobiographies; I don't want to talk about myself.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.