Literary Birthday – 11 August – Alex Haley

Alex Haley was born on 11 August 1921 and died on 10 February 1992.

Alex Haley Quotes

1. I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering, ‘What if?’
2. The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
3. Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
4. The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.
5. Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
6. Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between ‘being a writer’ and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. ‘You’ve got to want to write,’ I say to them, ‘not want to be a writer’.
7. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private, and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

Alex Haley was an American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His works of historical fiction depicted the struggles of African Americans. Roots spurred so much interest in family history that Haley created the Kinte Foundation (1972) to store records that help in tracing black genealogy. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In 1977, Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize Special Award for Roots.

Source for photograph: University of Texas at Arlington Photograph Collection, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
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