Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
RALPH ELLISONAnd I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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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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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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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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Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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Life is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life’s crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
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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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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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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 am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISON






