In terms of DNA, we are no more related to most of our ancestors than we are to the people around us on a train or at a baseball game.  (p. 4)

When I did start researching my ancestors, slowly at first, and then in great gusts of extreme obsession, I thought of it as a kind of scattershot, backward-looking detective work. (p. 7)

Plato mocked those who believed themselves to be “of noble birth because [they] can show seven wealthy ancestors.” Everyone, he writes in the Theaetetus (circa 369 BC), “has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves.” (p. 20)

With all the tools at their disposal, contemporary genealogists can test rumours passed down like pocketknives. They can also rebut lies, expose secrets, and heal fractures. (p. 27)

Since the start of human history, we’ve been losing track of it. The longer we live, the more we see this attrition happening in real time. Beloved grandparents die, taking their memories and leaving photo albums filled with people who were integral to the clan fifty years ago but are strangers now. Migration and forgetting, in particular, often go together.  (p. 57)

[Jung] came to believe in the importance of the dead and that, in ignoring them, in separating ourselves from them, we have done ourselves and the whole of the world a grave disservice. “Turn to the dead,” he wrote, “listen to their lament and accept them with love.” (p. 196)

… so many of us spend our lives struggling with or against our ancestors’ dreams without knowing precisely how or why. (p. 234)