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.
RALPH ELLISONMeaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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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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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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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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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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.
RALPH ELLISON