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Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

Ralph Ellison

I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
RALPH ELLISON
Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISON

Ability Humanity Little Lying Power Reveal Writer
And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
RALPH ELLISON

Coveive Live Lose Mind Pattern Plan Sight
It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISON

Change Commitment Committed Deep Grow Grows
I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
RALPH ELLISON

Ditch Guilt Hurt Invisibility Pain Sorror
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISON

Action Brain Forget Knowledge Possibility Power
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISON

Act Frequency Knowledge Knows Lower Motivation Speak
The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISON

Clock Empty Life Perfect Positive Sirens Tick Trying Urgency Value
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISON

Adult Certain Illegal Individual Minorities Permission Prohibited
When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
RALPH ELLISON

Available Discover Inspirational Inspiring Life One Liner
I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
RALPH ELLISON

Attempt Denial Excuse Invisibility Invisible Irresponsible Lazy Way
I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.
RALPH ELLISON

Feeling Bad Loose Low Needs Sad Territory Unhappy Worst
That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
RALPH ELLISON

Arrows Beautiful Exploit Explore Life Meaning Moving Things To Do
Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.
RALPH ELLISON

Conflict Crafts Discuss Immediate Novel Occupation Serious
That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
RALPH ELLISON

Good Time Identity Memories Memory Odds Punctual Remember
And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISON

Fail Fear Issue Loose My Own Problem Try Way

Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

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Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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