Devdutt Pattanaik

“If you don't have imagination, you stop being human; animals don't have imagination; Alzheimer's is the death of imagination.”

“Mythology is a vast body of knowledge that has not been tapped.”

“Then be human. Let go and move on. They who hurt you cannot expand their mind. But surely you can.”

“In India, the eldest has the most responsibility and the crown goes to him. The crown could go to a person with the most talent. But how could 'most talent' be determined? So Indian society settled on age.”

“In Greek mythology, the hero wants to be great, but the very concept does not exist in the Indian vocabulary. Yet it has become the global template. And it's a template that won't fit in India.”

“I write on sacred stories, symbols and rituals of all cultures - European, American and Chinese - but my audiences, typically, like me to focus on India.”

“Animal fight to defend their bodies. Humans curse to defend their imagination of themselves.”

“Only the ignorant think they alone are responsible for an outcome”

“Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them?”

“that which deludes you to be unhappy can be overpowered by another delusion that causes greater unhappiness”

“Nobody knows why we're alive; so we all create stories based on our imagination of the world; and as a community, we believe in the same story. In India, every person believes his/ her own mythosphere to be real. Indian thought is obsessed with subjectivity; Greek thought with objectivity.”

“Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way.”

“I have been doodling since childhood. I have a passion for illustrating but cannot paint or colour for that matter. I illustrate what I am trying to communicate through my writing. My images are like drawings in a science text book.”

“.. The point of human life is to travel from ignorance to wisdom. In ignorance there is fear. In wisdom there peace and tranquillity.”