"I don't know that movies are important. But I know that stories are important. Movies may disappear. They've only been around, for God's sake, for the last hundred years... I think that it's the need to tell stories, and that people need to be told stories. It's the old sitting around the fire, you know."

"Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep coming and going - the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Russians. Pray, are the Russians good now? It would be very shocking - treason no doubt - to put the wrong people in my prayers."

"You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history."

"The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather 'opens things up to the light of Heaven' by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to 'illumine,' for language does it by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over."