Alex Haley

“He was always - I like to say of Malcolm - he was just simply electrical. Everything he did almost was dramatic, and it wasn't that he was trying to be: it was just the nature of him.”

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

“We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.”

“If you're blessed to do something like 'Roots'... you find yourself immersed. You're asked to do this, to do that - all for admirable causes. But you're just swamped.”

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

“Most of the people I've met who are black in other countries look up to the blacks in this country. Though they may talk differently, they are anxious to partake of this country simply because things in their country are not physically on par with what they are here.”