Devdutt Pattanaik Quotations

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Refusal to accept the flow of the world is the root of all misery.

The crown could go to a person with the most talent. But how could ‘most talent’ be determined? So Indian society settled on age.

Neither death nor wisdom has a full stop. There are only commas-no destinations, only waiting rooms.

There is no such thing as an objective interpretation.

Within infinite myths lies the Eternal Truth Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes Indra, a hundred And I, only two