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.
RALPH ELLISONThat 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.
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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And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
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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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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
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What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?
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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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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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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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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
RALPH ELLISON






