The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
RALPH ELLISONWhen I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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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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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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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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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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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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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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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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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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I 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
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
RALPH ELLISON