Quotes from Ralph Ellison

while fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of "as if," therein lies its true function and its potential for effecting change.

I was to be a justifier, my task would be to deny the unpredictable human element of all Harlem so that they could ignore it when it in any way interfered with their plans.

collectivity of politically astute citizens who, by virtue of our vaunted system of universal education and our freedom of opportunity, would be prepared to govern.

If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside 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; yes, and avoided uncertain extremes of the scale.

They were all such a part of that other life that's dead that I can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither that time nor that I are anymore.)

that's when you got your first peep through the crack in the wall of life and saw hell laughing like a gang of drunk farmers watching a dogfight on a country road.

Dammit, white folk are always giving orders, it's a habit with them. Why didn't you make an excuse? You're black and living in the South-- did you forget how to lie?

And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.

remember the short formal sermons intoned from the pulpit there, rendered in smooth articulate tones, with calm assurance purged of that wild emotion of the crude preachers most of us knew in our home towns and of whom we were deeply ashamed

My God, boy! You're black and living in the South—did you forget how to lie?

Education Is All A Matter Of Building Bridges

Even the church has to have its outhouse, just as it has to have a front door as well as a back door, a basement as well as a steeple. Because man is always going to be man....

We mean to do right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times.

Besides, I might as well admit right now, I thought, that there are many things about people like Mary that I dislike. For one thing, they seldom know where their personalities end and yours begins; they usually think in terms of we while I have always tended to think in terms of me--and that has caused some friction, even with my own family.

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself.

No, you could never tell where you were going, that was a sure thing. The only sure thing. Nor could you tell how you'd get there—though when you arrived it was somehow right.

Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states.

Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description.

I'll teach you some good bad habits. You'll need 'em.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget.

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived.

Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don't believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate—I wish I had time to tell you only a fragment.

Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing.

The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak.