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The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.

History is very much bound up in family experience.

Whole generations have forgotten history.

I've always thought you have to live life looking forwards, not backwards. I've had no interest at all in who my ancestors are.

In a way, being born is a sort of ecological contagion. When you have longevity of family, we remember our grandfathers and maybe our great-grandfathers. We somehow don't have the capacity in modern life to remember further than that. All of the ramifications of their lives have an effect on us, and we're not aware of it.

We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I've worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.

There was a big question as to whether or not different generations have grown up differently.

Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.

The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.