For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.
Ralph EllisonIf the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
Ralph EllisonPower, for the writer....lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
Ralph EllisonAnd while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.
Ralph Ellison