A Quote by Black Elk

You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that's nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too.
'Harlem River' is about the Harlem River in uptown Manhattan. I don't know much to say about it. I came upon that river a couple of years ago. I was doing a walk the length of Manhattan, from the top to the bottom, and I had never seen that river before.
I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.
I used to ride horses and I remember one day I was working with a horse and we were having it jump, you know? There was a competition and so we were doing a test run and the horse fell on top of my body. I was a kid, like 7 years old. It took them a long time to take the horse off of my body after it had fallen.
Listen, there's been times in my life like the two years that I only listened to jazz, and probably nothing after 1966. When I went to the Manhattan School of Music, the library didn't have anything after 1966. In order to get good at that, I had to tunnel-vision and focus on that.
I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understood, that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see.
Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name.
I had not seen that until - and when it first came out I was told. I had not seen or been aware of all of that physical evidence. And when I saw it, I was horrified. It was so astounding to me to see that there was that much evidence.
I had a really good childhood up until I was nine years old. Then a classic case of divorce really affected me and I moved back and forth between relatives all the time. And I just became extremely depressed and withdrawn.
The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria Nyanza, and as I had foretold, that lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.
Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet - never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.
I hadn't seen 'The Purge' until I was trying to do the research for it. But it was my friends and my cousins, in particular, who came to me not too long before the audition process and asked me if I had seen it. They were talking about how great it was. I was engaged in the opportunity to do the film because of their intrigue with the franchise.
It was extraordinary 'cause I was 17 years old when I first danced with Edward Villella. And we were both young. But I had seen him dance, and he was already a star. So he was just so gentle and wonderful and kind, and we had a great rapport together. He was one of the most exciting dancers of our day.
Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books.
I remember when I was - I must've been 17 or 18 years old - I remember 'The Empire Strikes Back' had a big cliffhanger ending, and it was, like, three years before the next one came out.
I remember [Joe] Lovano came around to me at that time [of Monk competition]. And I had taken some lessons with Joe and I had seen Joe on the scene. He had always been so great to me, such and inspiration and so kind. One lesson that I had with Joe was just amazing. I'm just such a fan and an admirer of his on every level. He was like, "Don't worry... you're just out here. You just do what you're doing. Don't worry if it doesn't make you a household name or anything."
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