Ralph Ellison Thoughts

That is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.

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

In order to travel far you have to be detached.

If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

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

Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.

The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.