The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
RALPH ELLISONAll novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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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There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
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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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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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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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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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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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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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I blundered into writing.
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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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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.
RALPH ELLISON