I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

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

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."

Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.