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.
RALPH ELLISONI was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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I am nobody but myself.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
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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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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
RALPH ELLISON