Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
RALPH ELLISONWe don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.
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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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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.
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I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISON