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About this quote

What does it mean?
Appreciating art requires expanding your empathy and understanding of human experience.
In plain terms
You need to understand people to get art.
What can you take from it?
Art connects through shared humanity.

Where it applies

  • reading literature
  • viewing art
  • cultural study

Putting it to work

  • study human stories
  • practice empathy

Questions to consider

  • What does art teach you about people?
  • How do you expand your view of life?

Another view

Some art is meant to be felt without analysis.

More from Ralph Ellison

  1. The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

    Permalink to quote #17
  2. There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

    Permalink to quote #19
  3. The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.

    Permalink to quote #16

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