Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.

All modern humans are related to what scientists call Mitochondrial Eve. This refers to our common matrilineal ancestor. She lived approximately 200,000 years ago and depending on how you estimate the length of a generation, we are only 5,000 to 10,000 generations from one another. To put it another way, each of us is a cousin of one another at most 10,000 times removed. And yes, Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa, so, in a very real way, we are all Africans.

Daddy once told me there's a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn't stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there's nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.

Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where— as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen— even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their mee

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral port

Our names were made for us in another century.

After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...

It is in the roots, not the branches, that a tree's greatest strength lies.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.

Birth is nothing without virtue, and we have no claim to share in the glory of our ancestors unless we strive to resemble them.

People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from.