“Since humans became self-regarding they have sought, as well, explanations for the common phenomena of procreation, death, the cycle of seasons, the earth, sea, wind and stars, sun and moon, plenty and disaster. With myth, the writer's ancestors, the oral story-tellers, began to feel out and formulate these mysteries, using the elements of daily life — observable reality — and the faculty of the imagination — the power of projection into the hidden — to make stories.”

— Nadine Gordimer

Writing and Being (1991)

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Nadine Gordimer 57

South african Nobel-winning writer 1923–2014

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“Myth was the mystery plus the fantasy — gods, anthropomorphized animals and birds, chimera, phantasmagorical creatures — that posits out of the imagination some sort of explanation for the mystery. Humans and their fellow creatures were the materiality of the story, but as Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote, 'Art is the representation not of the body but of the forces which created the body.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

“Slowly the human beings have arise n-guided by a glimmering light — and have climbed spiritually from the earth and the clod, from the shrub and tree up the broad walls of the arched sky, to stars, and moon, and sun, and then beyond the sun, for the divinity seeldng and striving imagination stretches away to the invisible, all powerful, all-controlling, all-loving. One who permeates the universe, lives in it, and breathes His life through it, the eternal life to be taken into the human soul. The myth is the obscure image, in the child's soul, of God Himself.”

Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) Union Army officer

Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 10

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Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

Writers at Work interview (1963)

“Among all the luminaries shining in the sky, the sun is the chief, and in the Brahma-samhita the sun is accepted as the glowing eye of the Supreme Lord. There are fifty varieties of wind blowing in space, and of these winds the controlling deity, Marici, represents Krishna. Among the stars, the Moon is the most prominent at night, and thus the Moon represents Krishna. It appears from this verse that the Moon is one of the stars; therefore the stars that twinkle in the sky also reflect the light of the sun. The theory that there are many suns within the universe is not accepted by Vedic literature. The sun is one, and as by the reflection of the sun the Moon illuminates, so also do the stars. Since Bhagavad-gita indicates herein that the Moon is one of the stars, the twinkling stars are not suns but are similar to the Moon.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1972. Chapter 10, verse 21, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/10/21
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science