“If you’re a revolutionary, you shouldn’t have started a family.”

I considered this. “I think I come from the everybody’s smart category. But they don’t apply their smarts to… larger picture pursuits. That includes me.”
JPod (2006)

Source: Short fiction, Picking Up the Pieces (2011), p. 191
Context: I pushed her back hard. “You don’t belong with them; you’re not special, you have no place in any unseen world; you’re like me and the rest of our family. Get used to it!” She looked at me like I’d slapped her.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling equally stung by her reaction. “It’s hell being ordinary, but that’s the human condition.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Spark (2014)

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Source: The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americas Wealthy

Pass Me By
Song lyrics

TIME interview (1977)
Context: When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth. We all have it; it's a great equalizer. White people come up to me and tell me that Roots has started them thinking about their own families and where they came from. I think the book has touched a strong, subliminal pulse.