The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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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And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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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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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
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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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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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In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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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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I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
RALPH ELLISON






