Ralph Ellison

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new- by putting something else with what you've got. And I'm unashamedly an American integrationist.

The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas. Or, as Emerson insisted, the development of consciousness, consciousness, consciousness.

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

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see