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

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.

That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

My parents were teachers and they went out of their way to see to it that I had books. We grew up in a home that was full of books. And so I learned to read. I loved to read.

If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.

In the bush, trust no one you don't know.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.