...the way we talk...you know that our people like to talk around a subject even when there's no danger. They enjoy it, and if they know you well eno… - Ralph Ellison

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

They were very much the same, each attempting to force his picture of reality upon me and neither giving a hoot in hell for how things looked to me.

Running from the birds to what, I didn't know. I ran. Why was I here at all? I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.