We do not waste our intellects in generalising, but take man or bird as we find him .-- I think it is now my turn to ask you a question!" "You have the best of rights," I replied, "in the fact that you CAN do so!" "Well answered!" he rejoined.

"Tell me, then, who you are--if you happen to know." "How should I help knowing?
I am myself, and must know!" "If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself?
Are you sure you are not your own father ?--or, excuse me, your own fool ?--Who are you, pray ?" I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who I was.
Indeed, who was I?
It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not another.

As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of no consequence here.

I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a custom for everybody to have a name! So I held my peace, and it was my wisdom; for what should I say to a creature such as this raven, who saw through accident into entity?
"Look at me," he said, "and tell me who I am." As he spoke, he turned his back, and instantly I knew him.

He was no longer a raven, but a man above the middle height with a stoop, very thin, and wearing a long black tail-coat.