All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISONThat which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
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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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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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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?
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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We 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.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
RALPH ELLISON