All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISONI am nobody but myself.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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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.
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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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