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. - Ralph Ellison
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. - Ralph Ellison
He only wanted to use me for something. Everyone wanted to use you for some purpose. - Ralph Ellison
Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains. - Ralph Ellison
And all Negroes at some period of their lives there is that yearning for a sense of group unity that is the yearning of men for a flag: for a unity that cannot be compromised, that cannot be bought; that is conscious of itself, of its strength, that is militant. - Ralph Ellison
I had no doubt that I could do something, but what, and how? I had no contacts and I believed in nothing. And the obsession with my identity which I had developed in the factory hospital returned with a vengeance. Who was I, how had I come to be? - Ralph Ellison