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

The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.

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.

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.

I travel a lot. It used to be, when I would go to any country, I could guarantee that the first question would establish my name, and the fact that I've written Roots, and the third question, at least no later than the fourth question would not be a question, so much as a statement, something like, "We understand that in America white people do such and such bad things to black people."

Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.