In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
RALPH ELLISON
If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
RALPH ELLISON -
I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
RALPH ELLISON -
Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
RALPH ELLISON -
I am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISON -
If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
RALPH ELLISON -
The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
RALPH ELLISON -
Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISON -
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
RALPH ELLISON -
Education is all a matter of building bridges.
RALPH ELLISON -
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?
RALPH ELLISON -
America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISON -
Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
RALPH ELLISON -
The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
RALPH ELLISON -
There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISON -
If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
RALPH ELLISON -
Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISON