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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

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

Beautiful Exploit Explore Life Meaning Things To Do
I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
RALPH ELLISON

Imagination Implement Innovation Integrative Judge Plan Solution Task
The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
RALPH ELLISON

Antidote Discover Fact Hubris Ideas Irony Pride System
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
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
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
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?
RALPH ELLISON

Almighty Good Merry Go Round Sacrifice Wanted
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
I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISON

Awake Dream Invisible Remember Sleep Walk World
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
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
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Confirm Death Giving Life Light Reality Truth
Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISON

Act Circle Commitment Involvement Study Work
Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
RALPH ELLISON

Action Definition Hibernation Implement Preparation
The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISON

Clock Empty Life Perfect Positive Sirens Tick Trying Urgency Value
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
Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
RALPH ELLISON

Danger Feel Inspire Motivation Losing Sense Where
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
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISON

Adult Certain Illegal Individual Minorities Permission Prohibited
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Black History Fame Fiber Invisible Life Luck Men People Substance
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Butterfly Friend Happy Journey Long Love Order Plan Travel
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
Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
RALPH ELLISON

Action Activity Energy Form Mind Power Shapes
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
Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
RALPH ELLISON

Difficult Fiction Good Made Real Reality
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

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.

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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