Happy birthday, Ralph Ellison! Here are some quotes from his writing.
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
“Words are everything and don’t you forget it, ever.”
“Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway?—diversity is the word.”
“Power, for the writer, it seems to me lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity. And, in this country, I think it’s very, very important for the writer to, no matter what the agony of his experience….he should stick to what he’s doing, because the slightest thing that is new, or the slightest thing that has been overlooked, which would tell us about the unity of American experience—beyond all considerations of class, of race, or religion—are very, very important. I think that the nation is still in the process of becoming, of drawing itself together, of discovering itself. And when a writer fails to contribute to this, then he’s played his art false, and he probably does violence to our political vision of ourselves.”
“Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in.”
“When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.”
“Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.”
John Madera's fiction may be found in Conjunctions, Opium Magazine, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His criticism may be found in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.