Ralph Ellison Quotes
The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
Quotes to Explore
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At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.
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Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.
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When companies get big, they slow down. They're not as exciting. If you want to get something done, it takes a lot of time and a lot of meetings.
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One day there were two out in the ninth, and I hit a pop fly so high that the fans got tired of waiting for it to come down. So they all went home and listened to it drop by turning on the radio.
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There is no one looking out for us. We are all alone.
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I can paint in jail.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
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Sometimes, I find that just the simplest, cleanest things that are intelligently performed are funniest to me.
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All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
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An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative.
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I never personally complained; everybody else complained for me.
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I think I'm like a free spirit.
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I've never had any desire to be good. I don't like goodness particularly.
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It's always an honour doing anything for your country.
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I'm very tomboy, and I'm inspired by hip hop artists.
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A creationist can embarrass an evolutionist by asking for a definition of species.
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When 'Carmen' premiered in 1875, it was panned by the critics. It survived 45 performances. It was called a musical and moral outrage. After Bizet died, at age 37, 'Carmen' became wildly popular. If you believe in your creation, and the rest of the world is laughing or yelling 'Boo,' don't give up.
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It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that is the way to bet.
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I think interviews are good when you are an actual fan of the person you are interviewing.
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I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
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The question is not whether but how do the actions of a given gene influence some interesting aspect of behavior.
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I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.
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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.
