Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
Ralph EllisonRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggles of writers who seek acceptance but desire it on their own terms.
Ralph Ellison's quote reflects the complex relationship between writers and their audience. He suggests that the emotional pain and difficulty involved in writing stem from a deep yearning for validation, yet this acceptance must align with the writer's personal values and vision. Thus, it emphasizes the tension between the desire for recognition and the need for artistic integrity.
In practice
In a panel discussion on the challenges of creative writing, one might share this quote to emphasize the importance of staying true to oneself.
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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.
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.
If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then and only then will I drop my defenses and hostility, and I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.
That powers my desire to write: the sense of how quickly everything on the surface of life can be cut away and you can suddenly be inside the most inner part of the most inner life of a person. What does it feel like there, and what are the regrets and sensations and longings, and what is the music of it?
I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose β there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?
When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
Careers don't interest me. The only thing that interests me is continuing to be a poet on one level or another, whether acting or writing or directing.
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