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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

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
the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
RALPH ELLISON

Aim Concentrate Focus Ornery Plan Task Wonderful World
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
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISON

Act Frequency Knowledge Knows Lower Motivation Speak
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON

Control Enjoy Failure Happy Humanity Inspiring Life
America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISON

Copy Exact Recognize Same Strand Unchanged Woven
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
The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
RALPH ELLISON

Hobby Myself Past Require Shadow Skill Value Writing
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
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
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 not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
RALPH ELLISON

Affection Afraid Family Grandmother Grandparent Love Slave
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISON

Black History People Refuse Understand Visible
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
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
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISON

Action Brain Forget Knowledge Possibility Power

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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