"Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain."

Next Quote

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.

— Ralph Ellison