"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."

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

"Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you."

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."

"Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help."

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

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

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

"Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics."

"I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less."