There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISONEclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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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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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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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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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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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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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.
RALPH ELLISON