Ralph Ellison Quotes

I Am An Invisible Man. No, I Am Not A Spook Like Those Who Haunted Edgar Allan Poe; Nor Am I One Of Your Hollywood-movie Ectoplasms.

I Felt That Even When They Were Polite They Hardly Saw Me, That They Would Have Begged The Pardon Of Jack The Bear, Never Glancing His Way If The Bear Happened To Be Walking Along Minding His Business. It Was Confusing. I Did Not Know If It Was Desirable Or Undesirable.

Commercial Rock 'n' Roll Music Is A Brutalization Of The Stream Of Contemporary Negro Church Music An Obscene Looting Of A Cultural Expression.

All Novels Are About Certain Minorities: The Individual Is A Minority.

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 His Own Terms.

But What A Feeling Can Come Over A Man Just From Seeing The Things He Believes In And Hopes For Symbolized In The Concrete Form Of A Man. In Something That Gives A Focus To All The Other Things He Knows To Be Real. Something That Makes Unseen Things Manifest And Allows Him To Come To His Hopes And Dreams Through His Outer Eye And Through The Touch And Feel Of His Natural Hand.

When American Life Is Most American It Is Apt To Be Most Theatrical.

...and Yet I Am What They Think I Am.

Many Of The Rites Of Passage, Those Rituals Of Growing Up Found In Our Society, Are In The Form Of Such Comic, Practical Joking Affairs--which We Ignore In The Belief That They Possess No Deeper Significance. Yet It Is Precisely In Their Being Regarded As Unimportant That They Take On Importance. For In Them We Ritualize And Dramatize Attitudes Which Contradict And Often Embarrass The Sacred Values Which We Proclaim Through Our Solemn Ceremonies And Rituals Of Nationhood.

I Blundered Into Writing.

By And Large, The Critics And Readers Gave Me An Affirmed Sense Of My Identity As A Writer. You Might Know This Within Yourself, But To Have It Affirmed By Others Is Of Utmost Importance. Writing Is, After All, A Form Of Communication.

My Hole Is Warm And Full Of Light.