Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
RALPH ELLISONIn order to travel far you have to be detached.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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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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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
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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.
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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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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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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.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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.
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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISON