Ralph Ellison Quotes

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.

That 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.

I blundered into writing.

There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.

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 do?