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.
RALPH ELLISONLife is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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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.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
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Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
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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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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
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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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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.
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I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
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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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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 am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
RALPH ELLISON