Quotes About Concealment

The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience.

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise...

Piously we produce our images of you till they stand around you like a thousand walls. And when our hearts would simply open, our fervent hands hide you.

Gefährlich und schlecht sind nur jene Traurigkeiten, die man unter die Leute trägt, um sie zu übertönen; wie Krankheiten, die oberflächlich und töricht behandelt werden, treten sie nur zurück und brechen nach einer kleinen Pause um so furchtbarer aus; und sammeln sich an im Innern und sind Leben, sind ungelebtes, verschmähtes, verlorenes Leben, an dem Man sterben kann.

Zenginlik gibiydi karanl?k, odan?n içinde; saklan?p orac?kta çocuk, otururken.

Earth, isn't this what you want: to arise in us invisible?—Isn't your dream one day to be invisible?

E tutto congiura a tacere di noi, in parte come vergogna, o forse come speranza indicibile.

And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form.

I can hear you say, What a horrible, irresponsible bastard! And you're right. I leap to agree with you. 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? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.

To see around corners is enough (that is not unusual when you are invisible). But to hear around them is too much; it inhibits action.

That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.

And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.

Ralph Ellison

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

I'm an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact.

that there are many men in his image while he is himself unseen;

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding

We pass for what we are.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and monring dew

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man.