My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.

My parents were teachers and they went out of their way to see to it that I had books. We grew up in a home that was full of books. And so I learned to read. I loved to read.

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

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.

There was a great deal of inbreeding between the Indians and the slaves. Genetically speaking, black people are some part black, some part European.

The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it. ... You start out lowly and humble and you carefully try to learn an accretion of little things that help you get there.