The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
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I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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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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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
RALPH ELLISON