I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

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

When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

I am really quite proud of most of the people I " know who have "made it," who do things to help people.

History is written by winners.