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.

I think from what I personally know, I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have 'made it,' who do things to help people.

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.

The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.

My own perception of Malcolm was one of something that bordered on fascination because I was looking at him and reacting to him as a subject.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.