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.
RALPH ELLISONWho knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
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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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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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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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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
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We don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.
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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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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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…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISON