Rabindath Tagore

“In 1928, when I was seven, I went with my mother to Tagore’s university. I had my little autograph book, newly bought, and my mother gave the book to Tagore and said, “My son would like a few lines of verse from you.” And he said, “Leave the book with me.” Next day I went to collect it, and he brought it out and said: “I have written something for you, which you won’t understand now, but when you grow up you will understand it.”

It’s one of the best things he ever wrote in a small manner, and what it means is this: “I have travelled all round the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I’ve spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.”

It’s very, very important. The presence of the essential thing in a very small detail, which you must catch in order to express the larger thing.”

- Satyajit Ray (Sight & Sound magazine interview in 1970)