I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
RALPH ELLISONAnd I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I blundered into writing.
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I am nobody but myself.
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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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Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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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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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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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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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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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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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.
RALPH ELLISON