I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISONWhen American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
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I am nobody but myself.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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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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Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
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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.
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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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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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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 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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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON