All Ralph Ellison Quotes
- Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out… African American
- When I discover who I am, I'll be free. African American
- Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Certain
- America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This… America
- Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear. Creates
- Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by. Difficult
- The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead. Ahead
- There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here… All
- We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough. Coming
- And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others. Absurdity
- Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question. Answer
- What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to… Expected
- It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to… Accepted
- For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action,… Accept
- I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though… Anything Except
- I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I… Articulate
- I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is… All
- The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it. Discover
- And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. Always Tried
- Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are. Danger