God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
RALPH ELLISONMy hole is warm and full of light.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
-
-
Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
RALPH ELLISON -
The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
RALPH ELLISON -
…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISON -
I 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 ELLISON -
In order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISON -
Education is all a matter of building bridges.
RALPH ELLISON -
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISON -
Without 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 ELLISON -
Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
RALPH ELLISON -
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?
RALPH ELLISON -
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.
RALPH ELLISON -
The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
RALPH ELLISON -
I 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 -
Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
RALPH ELLISON -
I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
RALPH ELLISON