There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
RALPH ELLISONMan’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
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My hole is warm and full of light.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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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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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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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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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 am invisible, understand, simply because people 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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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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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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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
RALPH ELLISON






