Ralph Ellison Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.”

“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.”

“Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.”

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

“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.”

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

“The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.”

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

“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.”