Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.

In the beginning was the word, and it was spoken.

Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it.

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.

If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And, as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen.

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

The highest human purpose is always to reinvent and celebrate the sacred.

But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

Don't you worry Roald Dahl, The 6-year old me loved you but the 16-year old me worships you.

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.

For me music is a vehicle to bring our pain to the surface, getting it back to that humble and tender spot where, with luck, it can lose its anger and become compassion again.

These kids [of the current generation] have no fear of technology ... sort of like I have no fear of a refrigerator.

What I really like seeing from the stage is people having their own moments, when people are doing some performance of their own.

Now a lot has changed and I can separate a lot of things.

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear.

I think we all live dichotomies. I'm a father of three boys and a loyal homebody sort of husband and father. And yet I act in movies and write and direct movies.

Remember there is plenty of room at the top-but not enough to sit down.