Anita Desai Quotes

People will not look forward to posterity who are not anxious to look backward to their ancestry

Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from 'bog-trotters.'

I don't know much about my family history except that my father had straight black hair and his ancestors probably came from India.

There is a strong propensity in the human mind to trace up our ancestry as to high and as remote a source as possible; and if our pride and our ambition cannot be gratified by a real statement of facts, fable is substituted for truth, and the imagination is taxed to supply the deficiency.

People like to trace their ancestry.

My father's family, I think, were mostly from Lancashire, but I don't know how far back we go. I think it's quite a few generations.

We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestor.

Southerners are so devoted to genealogy that we see a family tree under every bush.

My mom's side of the family is from Arkansas!

I've always been fascinated by family ancestry.

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

You want to try to find your heritage.

I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.

My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

How will we know it’s us without our past?

I'd love to meet my ancestors. I'd love to be able to speak to them.

I was researching my family tree, and I was deeply hoping I was going to turn out to be Eastern European, but I'm not.

The Carter family history means a lot to me.

Blue Ivy can say she knows who her great-great-great-great-grandfather is. How many people can say that?

I always had my roots in the past.

It's good to look back and know where you come from.

There might well have been an Irish great-great-grandfather of mine back then in the 1800s.

It's good to know where you've come from.

One of the biggest things that I took from playing Kunta Kinte was where his strength came from in knowing where he was from.

A man's ancestry is a positive property to him.