Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.

In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

Meditation works in many layers. It works in our genes, in our DNA

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

All our ancestors were murdered, murderers, complicit to murder, or combating murder.

If you don't know history, you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.

Your ancestors are rooting for you.

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.)

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.

Do try The House by fresh new author, Susannah Mansfield, it's funny, sad and very different, you'll love the characters and the stories.

The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too.

Over the course of the millennia, all these multitudes of ancestors, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time—to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind?

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on.

History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill

Look to the past to see what the future holds.

I had never thought much of genealogy. A lot of wasted time collecting the names of the dead. Then stringing those names, like skulls upon a wire, into an entirely private and thus irrelevant narrative, lacking any historical significance. The narcissistic pastime of nostalgic bores.