“When I discover who I am, I'll be free.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 11.
Quotes from bookInvisible Man
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 1.
Context: 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 naïve. 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 born with: That I am nobody but myself.
“…the world is possibility if only you'll discover it.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 7.
“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man
“And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Variant: And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 25.
“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Epilogue (last line of the novel).
Source: Invisible Man (1952)
“They could laugh at him but they couldn't ignore him”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man
“I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 21.
“…the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.”
Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man
Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)
