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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

Ralph Ellison

If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
RALPH ELLISON

Art Justice Love Miracle Protest Social
I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISON

Black History Fame Fiber Invisible Life Luck Men People Substance
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 ELLISON

Afternoon Aware Awoke Flood Ice Melting Threat Week Winter
It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISON

Change Commitment Committed Deep Grow Grows
To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
RALPH ELLISON

Ashamed Fear Guilt Hell Like Scary Showcase
There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
RALPH ELLISON

Emotion Fairy Stories Faith Fiction Heart Leaving Love Loyal Reality Science
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Aim Concentrate Focus Ornery Plan Task Wonderful World
Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
RALPH ELLISON

Ancestor Emotion Family People Relationship
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Feeling Bad Loose Low Needs Sad Territory Unhappy Worst
I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
RALPH ELLISON

Imagination Implement Innovation Integrative Judge Plan Solution Task
Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
RALPH ELLISON

Difficult Fiction Good Made Real Reality
You 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.
RALPH ELLISON

Experience Grandfather Mind Side Start Trying Young
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.
RALPH ELLISON

America Fate Loyal Recognise Share Strand Woven
Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
RALPH ELLISON

Faces Harsh Injustice Reveal Seen Show Visible
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISON

Awesome Day Dancer Enjoy Feel Musician Play Scene Style
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.
RALPH ELLISON

Act Individual Life Men Minor Minority Novel Universal

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

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Popular Authors

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