God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
RALPH ELLISONPlease, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.
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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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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 truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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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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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
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I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
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I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
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I am nobody but myself.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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 I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
RALPH ELLISON