But that's getting too far ahead of the story, almost to the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead. - Ralph Ellison

The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

[T]he end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you’re lying, they’ll tell the world even if you prove you’re telling the truth. Because it’s the kind of lie they want to hear …

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my good—only they were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?