I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
RALPH ELLISONIf 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.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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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 denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
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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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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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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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I am nobody but myself.
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I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.
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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.
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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