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 ELLISONPerhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I am nobody but myself.
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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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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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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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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I blundered into writing.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
RALPH ELLISON






