And sometimes the difference between individual and organized indignation is the difference between criminal and political action. - Ralph Ellison

that’s when you got your first peep through the crack in the wall of life and saw hell laughing like a gang of drunk farmers watching a dogfight on a country road.

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own 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?

[Y]ou both fail to understand what is happening to you. You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of what you see — and you, looking for destiny! It’s classic! And the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less — a black, amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force...