All Ralph Ellison Quotes
- 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
- Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? Frequencies
- Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action. Action
- I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's… Adopt
- I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are… Awake
- I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers. All
- The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged… Aching
- In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live. Chose
- And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes… Chaos
- My hole is warm and full of light. Full
- The truth is the light and the light is the truth. Inspirational
- So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action,… Action
- God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity. Art
- The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled. Catch
- Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove. Dove
- Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and… Campus