Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
Richard WrightRead
Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the power of imagination and belief in one's own potential to create change, even in difficult circumstances.
Richard Wright emphasizes the importance of inner vision and determination in transforming one's environment and outlook on life. Despite facing external limitations and a bleak reality, he suggests that by believing in endless possibilities and drawing from one's desires, an individual can create a sense of hope and potential within their own mind. This quote serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity to envision a better future through personal conviction and creativity.
Themes
ImaginationPotentialBeliefResilienceInner Strength
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles.
More from Richard Wright
All quotes →It had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
Richard WrightRead
I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
Richard WrightRead
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
Richard WrightRead
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
Richard WrightRead
It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
Richard WrightRead
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But again and again, we should reflect back to the darkness of the cocoon. In order to inspire ourselves forward, we must look back to see the contrast with the place we came from. You see, we cannot reject the world of the cocoon - which out which we may create a new cocoon. When we see the suffering that occured in the old cocoon, that inspires us to go forward in our journey of warriorship. It is a journey that is unfolding within us.
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