That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
RALPH ELLISONGood fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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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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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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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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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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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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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON