We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
RALPH ELLISONWe look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
RALPH ELLISONThe end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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 ELLISONIt takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISONWe don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.
RALPH ELLISONIn order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISONI blundered into writing.
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 ELLISONI am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
RALPH ELLISONPower doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.
RALPH ELLISONPlease, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
RALPH ELLISONThe clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISONIf 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.
RALPH ELLISONLight confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.
RALPH ELLISONAnd my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISONThere are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
RALPH ELLISON