I blundered into writing.
RALPH ELLISONI blundered into writing.
RALPH ELLISONI am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
RALPH ELLISONSome people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
RALPH ELLISONIf social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
RALPH ELLISONI am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISONI 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 felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
RALPH ELLISONAll novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
RALPH ELLISONGod is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
RALPH ELLISONI am nobody but myself.
RALPH ELLISONWithout the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISONI 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.
RALPH ELLISONWithout involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISONEclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISON…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISONHad the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
RALPH ELLISONI am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISON