135 Quotes About Ancestry

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.

You carry all of us in your heart. We shall live in every breath you take. Every incantation you speak.

I have to find this last bit of mortar to secure the mosaic of my identity.

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...

My genetics have been in my family for generations.

No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket.

That knave would happily use a sextant to investigate his lineage and only tell the true Sun from a bastard.

When I reflect on the legacies left behind from my childhood, I am indebted to acknowledge the role my mother, grandmother, and godmothers played in my spiritual formation and personal development.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait."(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987)