When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical. — Ralph Ellison Copy Share Image
“When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share Image
“Civil wars...are the best wars for the writer...because they have a way of continuing long afterwl wars between nations are resolved; because, with the… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
“But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
Power, for the writer…lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity. — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
“Do they come to bury the others or to be entombed to give life or to receive it?” — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
Commercial rock 'n' roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression. — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
“All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all.” — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
“Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization--pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I've heard)--which might sound like a… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
“Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is… — Ralph Ellison Copy Share
