In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.

We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.

I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.

My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.