Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
RALPH ELLISONThe world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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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Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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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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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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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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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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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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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
RALPH ELLISON