Our wishes are our most reliable mirror, and the black-and-white movies I’m most drawn to are about artists who suffer because art is a noble thing; suffering is such a small price to pay for the imagination. Hilton Als Read Quote
Although the civil-rights movement did a lot to change how black life was dramatized on the American stage in the fifties and sixties, white composers and lyricists often still rely on familiar tropes when it comes to representing black women in musicals. Hilton Als Read Quote
I think that when I’m telling a story, I’m doing the best I can to tell the story as fully as I can, and if there are various fractures that happen in the story, then that’s just the very thing that the story is as opposed to my looking for avenues of difference in one story. They just really do exist. For me, anyway. Hilton Als Read Quote
If I feel like I haven’t really tapped into the essence of the story when I do an assignment, I may revisit it on my own, and that’s when I feel freer to add my imagination. But I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn’t do it in a journalistic context, because then you’re just fabricating, and that’s crazy. Hilton Als Read Quote
Black excellence is a thing. People – from Beyonce Knowles to Venus and Serena Williams to folks you haven’t heard of – are into it. It’s less a movement than a standard: believers set the bar high not only for themselves but also for others who share their vision, especially when it pertains to black history, stories, and style. Hilton Als Read Quote
