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.
RALPH ELLISONThe end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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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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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.
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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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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 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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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
RALPH ELLISON






