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.
RALPH ELLISONMeaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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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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Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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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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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.
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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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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
RALPH ELLISON