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Ralph Ellison Biography

Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913[a] – April 16, 1994) was an American novelist, literary critic, and scholar. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times, the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.

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Ralph Ellison Quotes

The truth is the light and the light is the truth.

Light, Truth, Truth Is

I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new -- by putting something else with what you've got. And I'm unashamedly an American integrationist.

American, Imagination, Integrative, Make, Putting

Power, for the writer. . . . lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.

Complexity, Humanity, Littles, Lying, Reveal, Writer

It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

Advantageous, Nerves, Solitude, Unseen, Wearing

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Definition, Definitions, Hibernation, Preparation

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

Past, Plunging, Requires, Shadow, Writing

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

Art, Forms, God, Identity, Love, Shadow

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.

Case, Fairy Stories, Human, Leaving, Reality

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.

My Own, Problem, Tried, Way

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

Expected, Instead, Lost, Trying, Wished

I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable.

Business, Confusing, Jack, Polite, Way

Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.

Face, Faces, Harsh, Injustice, Wears

Light 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.

Confirms, Death, Giving, Invisible, Light, Reality

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.

Attitude, Attitudes, Embarrass, Growing Up, Our Society, Significance

There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

Dangerous, Sleepwalkers, Things, World

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

Chaos, Come, Emerge, Giving, Patterns

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.

Long, Love, Order, Perhaps, Thought, Travel

We 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.

Art, Human, Humanity, Shakespeare, Understanding, Willingness

For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.

Attitude, Country, Hard Work, Progress, Times, Work

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

African American, Black History, Invisible, People, Refuse, See

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