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 ELLISONIn order to travel far you have to be detached.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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I am nobody but myself.
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Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
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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.
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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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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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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
RALPH ELLISON