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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

Ralph Ellison

I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
RALPH ELLISON
There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISON

Dangerous Few Permission Prohibited Sleepwaker World
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Chart Current Life Man Philosophy Reduce Sea
To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
RALPH ELLISON

Ashamed Fear Guilt Hell Like Scary Showcase
Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISON

Hope Man Picture Soaring Vulture
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
RALPH ELLISON

Affection Afraid Family Grandmother Grandparent Love Slave
Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
RALPH ELLISON

Action Activity Energy Form Mind Power Shapes
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISON

Action Brain Forget Knowledge Possibility Power
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Awake Dream Invisible Remember Sleep Walk World
We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
RALPH ELLISON

Enough Morning Museum Sun
Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
RALPH ELLISON

Chaos Desire Emerge Giving Patterns Positive Try
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Activity Attention God Hollywood Hunt Invisible Men Risk Spook
The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
RALPH ELLISON

Antidote Discover Fact Hubris Ideas Irony Pride System
Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.
RALPH ELLISON

Believe Confidence Inspirational Power Trust
The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
RALPH ELLISON

Discover Found Miracle Moral Possibility Shine World
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
RALPH ELLISON

Art Blue Circumstance Failing Human Irrepressible Music

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

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