Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
Ralph Ellison

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
Ralph Ellison

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
Ralph Ellison

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

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
Ralph Ellison

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 end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
Ralph Ellison

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.
Ralph Ellison