Ralph Ellison

...and yet I am what they think I am.

— Ralph Ellison

I blundered into writing.

— Ralph Ellison

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

— Ralph Ellison

My hole is warm and full of light.

— Ralph Ellison

“You're very insistent, but I'm very busy.”

— Ralph Ellison

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

— Ralph Ellison

I am nobody but myself.

— Ralph Ellison

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

— Ralph Ellison

“New York!" he said. "That's not a place, it's a dream.”

— Ralph Ellison

“I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.”

— Ralph Ellison

That ... is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.

— Ralph Ellison

“I knew that it was better to live out one’s own absurdity than to die for that of others.”

— Ralph Ellison

And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.

— Ralph Ellison

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled 'file and forget.'

— Ralph Ellison

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

— Ralph Ellison

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must…

— Ralph Ellison

“Why, godamit, why did they insist upon confusing the class struggle with the ass struggle, debasing both us and them—all human motives?”

— Ralph Ellison

“To see around corners is enough (that is not unusual when you are invisible). But to hear around them is too much;…

— Ralph Ellison

“Play the game, but don’t believe in it – that much you owe yourself … Play the game, but raise the ante,…

— Ralph Ellison

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by…

— Ralph Ellison

“Nothing ever stops; it divides and multiplies, and I guess sometimes it gets ground down superfine, but it doesn't just blow away.”

— Ralph Ellison

I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new -- by putting something else with what you've…

— Ralph Ellison

“I'd been so fascinated by the notion, that I'd forgotten to measure what it was bringing forth. I'd been asleep, dreaming.”

— Ralph Ellison

“Who am I? But it was like trying to identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid veins of my body.…

— Ralph Ellison

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this…

— Ralph Ellison

“And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I…

— Ralph Ellison

So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the…

— Ralph Ellison

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we…

— Ralph Ellison

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the…

— Ralph Ellison

“Yes, they think we're dumb. They call us the "common people." But I've been sitting here listening and looking and trying to…

— Ralph Ellison

America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's 'winner take nothing' that is the…

— Ralph Ellison

For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and…

— Ralph Ellison

“Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? …could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler…

— Ralph Ellison

“My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all…

— Ralph Ellison

“It's you young folks what's going to make the changes, y'all's the ones. You got to lead and you got to fight…

— Ralph Ellison

“Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton. Now he's in this box with the bolts tightened down. He's in…

— Ralph Ellison

“Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play…

— Ralph Ellison

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by…

— Ralph Ellison

The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to…

— Ralph Ellison

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

— Ralph Ellison