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

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

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.

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

I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.

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.