black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.

Ralph Ellison

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
The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
RALPH ELLISON

Beautiful Exploit Explore Life Meaning Things To Do
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISON

Awesome Day Dancer Enjoy Feel Musician Play Scene Style
And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISON

Fail Fear Issue Loose My Own Problem Try Way
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
Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISON

Ability Humanity Little Lying Power Reveal Writer
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
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISON

Act Frequency Knowledge Knows Lower Motivation Speak
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISON

Action Brain Forget Knowledge Possibility Power
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Coveive Live Lose Mind Pattern Plan Sight
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Depend Humanity Understanding Will
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
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

Conflict Crafts Discuss Immediate Novel Occupation Serious
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
RALPH ELLISON

Bind Imprison Political Politics Potency Power Revive
If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
RALPH ELLISON

Art Justice Love Miracle Protest Social
God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Bless God Identity Moksha Pray Shadow Truth

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ralph Ellison Quotes