Many of the rites of passage, those rituals of growing up found in our society, are in the form of such comic, practical joking affairs—which we ignore in the belief that they possess no deeper significance. Yet it is precisely in their being regarded as unimportant that they take on importance. For in them we ritualize and dramatize attitudes which contradict and often embarrass the sacred values which we proclaim through our solemn ceremonies and rituals of nationhood.
—Ralph Ellison
When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: America
The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: Beginnings
Some 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 Ellison
Topics: Family
There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
—Ralph Ellison
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: Words
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
Topics: Exile, Prejudice
Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: Beauty
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: Life
America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: America
It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
—Ralph Ellison
Topics: Commitment
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- John Updike American Author
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- Thomas Wolfe American Novelist
- Lionel Trilling American Critic
- John Irving American Novelist
- Richard Wright American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
- Don DeLillo American Author
- John Barth American Novelist
- Ernest J. Gaines American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
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