Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISONI am nobody but myself.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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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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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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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.
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISON