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 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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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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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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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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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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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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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.
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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.
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Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
RALPH ELLISON