black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.

Ralph Ellison

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
RALPH ELLISON

Act Individual Life Men Minor Minority Novel Universal
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
It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISON

Being Yourself Ego Expectation Life Love Respect Self Self Esteem
That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
RALPH ELLISON

Arrows Beautiful Exploit Explore Life Meaning Moving Things To Do
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Emotion Fairy Stories Faith Fiction Heart Leaving Love Loyal Reality Science
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
The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
RALPH ELLISON

Discover Found Miracle Moral Possibility Shine World
I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
RALPH ELLISON

Ditch Guilt Hurt Invisibility Pain Sorror
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

Ancestor Emotion Family People Relationship
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
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
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISON

Act Frequency Knowledge Knows Lower Motivation Speak
America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
RALPH ELLISON

America Fate Loyal Recognise Share Strand Woven
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
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISON

Adult Certain Illegal Individual Minorities Permission Prohibited
I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
RALPH ELLISON

In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ralph Ellison Quotes