[T]here's always an element of crime in freedom. - Ralph Ellison

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

For their most innocent words were acts of violence to which we of the campus were hypersensitive though we endured them not.

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.