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.
RALPH ELLISONI 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.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
RALPH ELLISON -
I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
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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.
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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.
RALPH ELLISON -
When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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.
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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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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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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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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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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.
RALPH ELLISON