Al Alvarez

“The risk is the point. The thrill of it all.”

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

“The better the writer, the more complicated the ego.”

“Divorce becomes a habit.”

“What poetry needs is a new seriousness. I mean a seriousness which can embrace not just the private agonies of the poet, but the full range of his experience.”

“The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely alone.”

“Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.”

“For the artist, the only real tragedy is when he is deprived of his art.”