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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.

Ralph Ellison

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
RALPH ELLISON

Difficult Fiction Good Made Real Reality
That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
RALPH ELLISON

Good Time Identity Memories Memory Odds Punctual Remember
Life is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life’s crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Chart Current Life Man Philosophy Reduce Sea
What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?
RALPH ELLISON

Desire Expected Happiness Lost Satisfy Trying Wish
When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
RALPH ELLISON

Act American Life Life Positive Rules Theatrical
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISON

Act Frequency Knowledge Knows Lower Motivation Speak
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

Activity Attention God Hollywood Hunt Invisible Men Risk Spook
I am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISON

Motivation Myself Nobody One Liner Sefl Love Task
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Contradictory Freedom Long Shout Sing Song Unison Voice
My hole is warm and full of light.
RALPH ELLISON

Holes Life Light One Liner Positive Warm Women
Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
RALPH ELLISON

Church Comercial Culture Expression Music Rocks Stream Trend
Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISON

Hope Man Picture Soaring Vulture
You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.
RALPH ELLISON

Experience Grandfather Mind Side Start Trying Young
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISON

Black History People Refuse Understand Visible
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Blue Circumstance Failing Human Irrepressible Music
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?
RALPH ELLISON

Attempt Denial Excuse Invisibility Invisible Irresponsible Lazy Way

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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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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