Quotes by : Ralph Ellison

Deep at the dark bottom of the melting pot, where the private is public and the public private, where....

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your....

So now they're shaking in their boots and looking for someone to give them the answer they want to hear.....

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

When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.

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

...out of the counterfeiting of the black American's identity [in blackface minstrelsy] there arises....

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones....

I had no doubt that I could do something, but what, and how? I had no contacts and I believed in nothing.....

Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? .......could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the....