Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.

We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.

Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.

The Navajo have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. The Navajo say, 'Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I'm on the pollen path.'

The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive

Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historica l, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former-the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers-prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.

Myth is what we call other people's religion.