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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

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Alex Haley
Age: 70 †
Born: 1921
Born: August 11
Died: 1992
Died: February 10
Biographer
Genealogist
Historian
Journalist
Military Personnel
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Ithica
New York
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley
Alexander M. P. Haley
Poet
Burned
Dies
Immense
Today
Poets
Africa
Acknowledge
Library
Debt
Tribal
Ground
Rightly

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The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.
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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.
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Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
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I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.
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I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.
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I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have made it, who do things to help people.
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Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
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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.
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That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
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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 came from.
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The way to succeed is never quit. Thats it. But really be humble about it.
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Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.
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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.
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There was a great deal of inbreeding between the Indians and the slaves. Genetically speaking, black people are some part black, some part European.
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Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.
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You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
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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.
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I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.
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