Three gems

*It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

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

*Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is to be won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.

- Ralph Ellison