In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
Ralph EllisonIt is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
Ralph EllisonThat 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 EllisonEclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
Ralph EllisonBut what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand.
Ralph Ellison