History is written by winners.

If you need to know history, the real story of those before you, then you should go to the library and read newspaper clippings of someone like Muhammad Ali every day, then it might giver you some understanding of the man.

Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

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.

Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.

I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true.

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."