Comments on a passage in Where the Wild Things Are (1963) by Maurice Sendak, as quoted by Bill Moyers in "NOW with Bill Moyers", PBS (12 March 2004) http://www.pbs.org/now/arts/sendak.html <br class="br">Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

“Marriage… is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92)”

Joseph Campbell

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.”

Joseph Campbell

Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 15
The Power of Myth (1988)

“Heresy is the life of a mythology, and orthodoxy is the death.”

Joseph Campbell

Lecture 1A, 20:42
Mythology and the Individual (1997)

“It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

“No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 2

“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

The Power of Myth (1988)

“The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

“The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending; death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms which we have loved.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 2

“People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?" And I say, "Yes, it's great the way it is" … I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions… I said, "Yes, I have a question." I said, " Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?" And he said, "For you and me, you must say yes." Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)