The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
RALPH ELLISONYou start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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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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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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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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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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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISON






