"For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer."

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So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?

— Ralph Ellison