Al Alvarez Quotes

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.

Each of us will have to make the choices that allow us to be the largest versions of ourselves.

It's like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I'm stitching the scraps back together.

A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.

I write to find out what I am thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things.

A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.

Don't plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.

Everyone needs a strong sense of self. It is our base of operations for everything that we do in life.

I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.

Every writer can tell you that a book is only truly alive when it finds passionate readers who bring it alive in their imaginations.

I grew up in a dictatorship, where you couldn't talk about difficult situations - there was this culture of silence. We would run into a problem and have no one to talk to.

Schools provide safe spaces to talk about controversial issues, and literature presents characters portraying human experience in all its richness and contradictoriness.

There is no end to what can be said about the world

I don't like to say bad things about paleontologists, but they're not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors.

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote.

How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.

Independence didn't have to be exile.

There is no other art with as great a democratic capacity as photography.

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.

When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family.

Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.

Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature!

Shoot what you see, not what you think.

I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death.

Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us.

I give the moment permanence.

I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind.

The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics.

The more dangerous the situation I put myself into, the more I rise, the better I become.

I'm not much of a planner. I set a goal and there really is nothing else... no plan B.

Dirac politely refused Robert's [Robert Oppenheimer] two proffered books: reading books, the Cambridge theoretician announced gravely, "interfered with thought."

The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money.

If I don't give up in the ring, I don't give up in life... I try to live my life the same way.

I think it is important to know how to teach new material to help young people grow and learn.

If my photos have any value, it's because they show a Mexico that no longer exists.

We did not underestimate what we could do.

You look good, you feel good. You feel good, you fight good.

It doesn't make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn't we trust them instead of being afraid of them?

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.

In my everyday life, I can be as square as I want. But when it comes to movies and telling stories, I can't. I've got to be radical, and on some level, that's what I like to do.

That's kind of my ideal sequel - a movie that continues the story, takes one character and moves on, and moves forward with that character that survived with the first one.

Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision.

The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

When you make a bet, you're saying something.

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.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

I'm good at reading people.

I would favor a law that no one could ever buy a gun.