We don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.
RALPH ELLISONThe clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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 was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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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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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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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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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 blundered into writing.
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Perhaps 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.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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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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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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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