Quotes by Alex Haley - Page 2

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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Admirable
Blessed
Causes
Roots
Asked
Immersed
Swamped
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You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you. It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps.
Alex Haley / Writer
Esprit De Corps
Feelings
Years
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I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.
Alex Haley / Writer
Debt
Library
Today
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Book
Children
Successful
Love Me Look
Books
Becomes
Less
Fact
Love Look Me
Parents
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Home
Teacher
Book
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Dramatic
Electrical
Almost
Simply
Malcolm
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Time
Humble
Trying
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A word, for example, that is negative, pejorative, and has caused more pain and suffering is 'illegitimate.' But every person has a mother and father. It is another way we let society hurt others.
Alex Haley / Writer
Another Way
Example
Hurt
Mother And Father
Negative
Pain
Caused
For Example
Illegitimate
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Two years passed, and I had no second book to follow 'Roots.' Four years passed, six years. When a decade had passed without me having another book to follow 'Roots,' I was having serious private frustrations with myself.
Alex Haley / Writer
Roots
Decade
Frustrations
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Men
Real
Understanding
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Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.
Alex Haley / Writer
Dream
Attitude
Giving Up
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To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within 'Roots' is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents.
Alex Haley / Writer
Documents
Effort
Lineage
Roots
African
American Families
Carefully
Families
Oral
Preserved
Statement
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I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.
Alex Haley / Writer
Bears
British
Eden
Pilgrim
Resemblance
Trading
Village
Nearly
Gave
People True Way
Rock
Portrait
Post
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You're always being judged. No matter what you do, it's not the right thing. If you didn't become successful, then you'd be pointed at as one of those creatures down their who didn't take advantage of this or that, who didn't climb and rise and so forth.
Alex Haley / Writer
Advantage
Matter
Successful
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Giving
Matter
Sick
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I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
Alex Haley / Writer
Dream
People
What If
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Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.
Alex Haley / Writer
Men
Country
Lying
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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.
Alex Haley / Writer
Anxious
Other Countries
Physically
May Look People
Blacks
Look Black Country
Par
Partake
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In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.
Alex Haley / Writer
Adoption
Loneliness
Vacuums
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The money I have made and will be making means nothing to me compared to the fact that about half of the black people I meet - ranging from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated - say to me, 'I'm proud of you.' I feel strongly about always earning that and never letting black people down.
Alex Haley / Writer
Earning
Half
Proud
Sophisticated
Money Always Me
Money Black Me
Least
Letting
Meet
Strongly
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If you think about it, there's not a religious group, there's not a nationalistic group, there's not a tribe, there is no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism, or who has not had people against them just because they were them.
Alex Haley / Writer
Another Time
Consequence
Nationalistic
Racism
Religious
Group
Object
Tribe
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It's always intrigued me that amidst the group called slaves there were individuals who were extremely able, who were extremely colorful, who were powerful personalities, who by no means fit the usual images of slaves. They were people who, through their personalities and abilities, were very respected in the community where they lived by both black and white.
Alex Haley / Writer
Black And White
Mean
Powerful
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I travel a lot. It used to be, when I would go to any country, I could guarantee that the first question would establish my name, and the fact that I've written Roots, and the third question, at least no later than the fourth question would not be a question, so much as a statement, something like, "We understand that in America white people do such and such bad things to black people."
Alex Haley / Writer
Country
Guarantees That
Names
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I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.
Alex Haley / Writer
Asking Questions
Book
College
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I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.
Alex Haley / Writer
Book
Reading
Thinking
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Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.
Alex Haley / Writer
Dream
Lonely
Writing
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Alex Haley Quotes - Page 2

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