"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 (The Invisible Man)

"It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been borht with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!"
— Ralph Ellison

"And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others."
— Ralph Ellison

"When I discover who I am, I’ll be free"
— Ralph Ellison

"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?"
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question."
— Ralph Ellison

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough."
— Ralph Ellison (Shadow and Act)

"Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
"
— Ralph Ellison

"I am an invisible man. 
No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: 
Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.
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, simply because people refuse to see me. "
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man: A Novel)

"Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"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."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who hanted Edgar Allan Poe; not am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to posses a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"I knew that it was better to live out one’s own absurdity than to die for that of others."
— Ralph Ellison

"The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied"
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"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

"I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"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

"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..."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"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