And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISONThe thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
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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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God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
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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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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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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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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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I blundered into writing.
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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISON