Ralph Ellison Quotes

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

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

I 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

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

I was no longer afraid. Not of important men, not of trustees and such; for knowing now that there was nothing which I could expect from them, there was no reason to be afraid.

Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.

Literature is integrated, and I'm not just talking about color or race. I'm talking about the power of literature to make us recognize - and again and again - the wholeness of the human experience.

Yes, they think we're dumb. They call us the "common people." But I've been sitting here listening and looking and trying to understand what's so common about us. I think they're guilty of a gross mis-statement of fact-we are the uncommon people-

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

Words of Emancipation didn't arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.