Al Alvarez quotes

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. He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul - his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self. (Al Alvarez)
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.
Al Alvarez
Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; 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.
Al Alvarez
The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively, in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.
Al Alvarez
I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don't get any patients.
Al Alvarez
Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.
Al Alvarez
I'm good at reading people.
Al Alvarez
Yes, I think poker really isn't gambling.
Al Alvarez
I mean to say, this is the book and I really loathe it and I can't imagine what a nice Jewish boy like me ever, how I ever got into this dreadful trade.
Al Alvarez
I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.
Al Alvarez
I hate writing. (Al Alvarez)
His face was blue, on his fingers Flecks of green. 'This is my father', I thought.
Al Alvarez
But in a tournament, you can be said in for all your money at any point so you can't make any mistakes so you have to, it's all about where you're sitting at the table.
Al Alvarez
I absolutely don't believe in anything. Full stop. Including luck.
Al Alvarez
When you make a bet, you're saying something.
Al Alvarez