Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.

Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.

For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.

The root of oppression is the loss of memory.

Medicine people are truly citizens of two worlds, and those who continue to walk the path of medicine power learn to keep their balance in both the ordinary and the non-ordinary worlds.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.

America does not seem to remember that it derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and a large part of its "dream" from Native Americans.

... America has amnesia. ... Certainly, there is a passion for memory loss in American thought. ... Americans may be the world champion forgetters.

Hoop Dancer is a rendering of my understanding of the process by which one enters into timelessness -- that place where one is whole.

The shadows cannot speak.

You ought to recognise your special talent, for your specific purpose.

True obedience is the refusal to compromise in any regard our relationship with God, regardless of the consequences.

I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.

It's just the biggest mistake I could think to make

Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.

I don't know who Maxime thinks she's kidding. If Hagrid's half-giant, she definitely is. Big bones... the only thing that's got bigger bones than her is a dinosaur.

D'Angelo could sing the phonebook and it would sound good.

Peace is the language we must speak.

I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it. But you have to be efficient if you're going to be lazy.

I've said what I'm prepared to say in my poems, and then journalists think that you're going to tell them a whole lot more.