There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISONThere are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISONThat which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
RALPH ELLISONIt is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
RALPH ELLISONLife is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life’s crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
RALPH ELLISONI denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
RALPH ELLISONThe antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
RALPH ELLISONWords are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
RALPH ELLISONI blundered into writing.
RALPH ELLISONPower, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISONAmerica is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISONIt takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISONthe world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
RALPH ELLISONEducation is all a matter of building bridges.
RALPH ELLISONHad the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
RALPH ELLISONI 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 few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISONWhen I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
RALPH ELLISON