I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. - Ralph Ellison

..and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jack's and the Emerson's and the Bledsoe's and the Norton's...but only from their confusion and impatience and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity...and mine...

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

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.