Quotes About Identity

and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jack's and the Emerson's and the Bledsoe's and the Norton's...but only from their confusion and impatience and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity...and mine...

Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death.

Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.

Here I had thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men Ã¢â'¬Â¦ For all they were concerned, we were so many names scribbled on fake ballots, to be used at their convenience and when not needed to be filed away. It was a joke, an absurd joke.

What did I do To be so black And blue?

You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're part of all the sound and anguish

I was to be a justifier, my task would be to deny the unpredictable human element of all Harlem so that they could ignore it when it in any way interfered with their plans.

They were all such a part of that other life that's dead that I can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither that time nor that I are anymore.)

Dammit, white folk are always giving orders, it's a habit with them. Why didn't you make an excuse? You're black and living in the South-- did you forget how to lie?

And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.

My God, boy! You're black and living in the South—did you forget how to lie?

Besides, I might as well admit right now, I thought, that there are many things about people like Mary that I dislike. For one thing, they seldom know where their personalities end and yours begins; they usually think in terms of we while I have always tended to think in terms of me--and that has caused some friction, even with my own family.

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself.

Ralph Ellison

Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description.

Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don't believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate—I wish I had time to tell you only a fragment.

I passed on to a window decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin. "You too can be truly beautiful," a sign proclaimed. "Win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set.

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. 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.

I recalled a report of a shoe-shine boy who had encountered the best treatment in the South simply by wearing a white turban instead of his usual Dobbs or Stetson, and I fell into a fit of laughing.

America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain.

Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy.

Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind. Oh, yes, it made them happy and it made me sick. So I became ill of affirmation, of saying "yes" against the nay-saying of my stomach—not to mention my brain.

For we select neither our parents, our race nor our nation; these occur to us out of the love, the hate, the circumstances, the fate, of others.

Even let them eat hummingbirds' wings and tell you it's too good for you.—Grits and greens don't turn to ashes in anybody's mouth—how about it, Rev. Eatmore?