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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

Ralph Ellison

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
RALPH ELLISON

Caring Cop Gun Poet Thought Trigger Word
When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
RALPH ELLISON

Act American Life Life Positive Rules Theatrical
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?
RALPH ELLISON

Desire Expected Happiness Lost Satisfy Trying Wish
Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
RALPH ELLISON

Faces Harsh Injustice Reveal Seen Show Visible
In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
RALPH ELLISON

Choice Day Desperate Live Music
I am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISON

Motivation Myself Nobody One Liner Sefl Love Task
America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISON

Copy Exact Recognize Same Strand Unchanged Woven
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Black History Fame Fiber Invisible Life Luck Men People Substance
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Depend Humanity Understanding Will
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISON

Awesome Day Dancer Enjoy Feel Musician Play Scene Style
I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
RALPH ELLISON

Hate Honest Life Satisfied Success Try Work
the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
RALPH ELLISON

Aim Concentrate Focus Ornery Plan Task Wonderful World
I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
RALPH ELLISON

Asking Being Yourself Individuality Myself Query Question
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Blue Circumstance Failing Human Irrepressible Music
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.
RALPH ELLISON
I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
RALPH ELLISON

Imagination Implement Innovation Integrative Judge Plan Solution Task

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

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