Ralph Ellison Quotes

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 few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

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 is not prophecy, but description.

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.