For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words. - 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.

On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." They thought the old man had gone out of his mind. He had been the meekest of men. The younger children were rushed from the room, the shades drawn and the flame of the lamp turned so low that it spouttered on the wick like the old man's breathing. "Learn it to the younsters," he whisdpered fiercely; then he died.