Keith Whitley Quotes

I believe in traditions; I believe in the idea of things being passed between generations and the slow transmission of cultural values through tradition.

I think you can always learn lessons by the guys who came before you.

I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.

My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

My family is Native American, and I was raised with Native American ceremonies.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

It's good to pass on stories.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

Storytelling is the oldest form of entertainment there is. From campfires and pictograms - the Lascaux cave paintings may be as much as twenty thousand years old - to tribal songs and epic ballads passed down from generation to generation, it is one of the most fundamental ways humans have of making sense of the world.

I just love learning about the past and everything we've been through as people and as a country.

I am not trained to be a director or an actor. I have learnt everything by watching other people work and studying their work.

I don't think there's any substitute for experience.

I listen to the older people who talk to me. I call them my old heads, people with a lot of wisdom. They'll teach you a lot if you listen.

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Young heads take example of the ancient

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart.

In this land of the Ganga (Varanasi), there was education of culture. But, more importantly, there was a culture of education.

Experience is the mother of custom.

One of the greatest gifts we can give to another generation is our experience, our wisdom.

We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.