A Visible Man Quotes

“I have always had a very hungry eye and it needs to be fed with films, books, faces, nature, clothes, architecture: you name it. I’m constantly taking in references, mixing and re-mixing them in my mind, and then transforming them into something else.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“Why look back when you can look forward? Why look in when you can look out? Where’s the next evolution? I throw everything into my work, but once it’s done, I’m really more concerned with what’s new. The future is my thing.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“The world is in too dire a need of creativity, of original thought, to hold anyone back who may have the next great idea, who could be helping us move forward together.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“God, my life is going so well, I thought to myself. Too well. Something bad must be about to happen.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“contributed to the problem in my own way. I was not great at selling myself. As a Black person in a still very white world, I knew I had to keep it humble. It was an ego-boost for me and a relief to my colleagues that I could take so much on my shoulders, but it had an adverse effect on my mind and soul. When you can do all things for all people, and well enough to be consistently rewarded for it, especially from a very young age, you have a harder time landing on what actually makes you, yourself tick. It becomes about what you can do for others, and when you can do whatever that is to a high standard, and you’re young, a perverse system of incentives gets installed in you. You bend to the situation, you don’t impose yourself on it. You see yourself as of service to the talent rather than the talent yourself. It can make you feel empty inside, when you know that somewhere within you there’s more to say.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“And impostor syndrome is something every Black person has been conditioned to feel. It’s the energy of, ‘What are you doing here?’ internalised into a kind of constant feedback loop.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“coming from an African family as I did, where your work is so connected to your self-worth, it seemed normal to me that this new life I was building revolved entirely around the job.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“she was direct as hell. She said it like she saw it and had zero time for fakers and idiots.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir

“Even when I was young and didn’t have the language to explain it, there was always a tension between how I might want to act naturally and what my father considered appropriate behaviour. I learned to check my every instinct when I was around him, though luckily I didn’t internalise his disapproval to such an extent that it entirely killed my spirit.”
― Edward Enninful, A Visible Man: A Memoir