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? - Ralph Ellison

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

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.

Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word.[…] For if the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison and destroy.