America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISONEducation is all a matter of building bridges.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
RALPH ELLISON -
God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
RALPH ELLISON -
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 -
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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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON -
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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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISON -
We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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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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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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 -
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