quote · Legacy record
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!
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!
Approximate author period: c. 1954 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Ralph Ellison
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1954 AD · modern
Approximate period for the recorded attribution to Ralph Ellison, based on documented lifetime 1914 to 1994. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965 (checked 2026-10-08). This is not a quotation composition date or independent authentication of its attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q299965 (accessed 2026-10-08).
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 147926; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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