# Quote — Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

> 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. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.

- Author: [Ralph Ellison](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison.md)
- Book: [Invisible Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison/invisible-man.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison#Invisible_Man_(1952)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison/invisible-man/i-am-an-invisible

## More from this book

> Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway?—diversity is the word.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison/invisible-man/whence-all-this.md)

> I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison/invisible-man/i-do-not.md)

> And yet I am what they think I am.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ralph-ellison/invisible-man/and-yet-i-am-what.md)