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

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

“You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.”