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 i… - Ralph Ellison

In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.

Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and
amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action.
He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in
stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing
gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a
Well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the
nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time.

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.