Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISONThe world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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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.
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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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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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I am nobody but myself.
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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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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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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






