It goes a long way back, some twenty years. 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 naive. 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. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
Ralph EllisonThe clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
Ralph EllisonIt is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
Ralph Ellison