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Deep at the dark bottom of the melting pot, where the private is public and the public private, where black is white and white black, where the immoral becomes moral and the moral is anything that makes one feel good (or that one has the power to sustain), the white man's relish is apt to be the black man's gall.

— Ralph Ellison Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke (1958)

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More quotes by Ralph Ellison

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or a moaning dove.

Invisible Man (1952)

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

Words are everything and don't you forget it, ever.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

All Ralph Ellison quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Ellison (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.