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 ELLISONMy hole is warm and full of light.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.
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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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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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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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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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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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I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
RALPH ELLISON