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The Indian is a human being.

The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race will ever understand.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

The American Indian was an individualist in religion as in war. He had neither a national army nor an organized church.

My mum told me once I was a Hindu.

People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.

The food we ate was Indian, and both my mother and father were very deep into the ancient philosophy of India, so it could well have been an Indian household.

My father was very outwardly religious.

I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.

I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.