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Our task then is always to challenge the apparent forms of reality—that is, the fixed meaning and values of the few—and to struggle with it until it reveals its mad, vari-implicated chaos, its false faces, and on until it surrenders its insight, its truth.

— Ralph Ellison Brave Words for a Startling Occasion (1953)

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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.