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 ELLISONTo hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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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.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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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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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
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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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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 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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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISON