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Power, for the writer....lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.

Ralph Ellison

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Ralph Ellison
Age: 80 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 1
Died: 1994
Died: April 16
Autobiographer
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Music Critic
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
Ralph Waldo Ellison
Lying
Power
Reveal
Littles
Complexity
Little
Lies
Writer
Bits
Humanity
Ability

More quotes by Ralph Ellison

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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
Ralph Ellison
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That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
Ralph Ellison
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...and yet I am what they think I am.
Ralph Ellison
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I am nobody but myself.
Ralph Ellison
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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.
Ralph Ellison
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At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.
Ralph Ellison
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
Ralph Ellison
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Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form...without light I am not only invisible but formless as well and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death...the truth is the light and light is the truth.
Ralph Ellison
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
Ralph Ellison
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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. Stephen Covey It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
Ralph Ellison
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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
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It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
Ralph Ellison
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
Ralph Ellison
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
Ralph Ellison
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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
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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.
Ralph Ellison
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I suddenly recall the arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass-gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like feminine fluting, then suppressed as though snuffed swiftly and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air now vibrant with somber chapel bells.
Ralph Ellison
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
Ralph Ellison
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
Ralph Ellison
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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