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

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

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

Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?” cried the boy. “Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. “That is the way of the world.

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

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.

Most of us prefer to be as quiet as possible about giving, because every time it's publicized that we do something, if it's something of the nature of giving, we'll be doubly besieged, and you really get sick of being always criticized no matter what you do.