If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.
Joseph CampbellYou must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you donโt know what was in the newspapers that morning, you donโt know who your friends are, you donโt know what you owe anybody, you donโt know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
Joseph CampbellPoetry comes out of an elite experience, the experience of people whose ears are opened to the song of the universe.
Joseph CampbellAnd so Galahad decided that it would be a disgrace to set off on a quest with the other knights. Alone he would enter the dark forest where there was no path. This is the myth of The Hero's Journey.
Joseph CampbellWhere there is a way or path, it is someone else's. Each of us has to find his own way.
Joseph CampbellChristianity isnโt moving peopleโs lives today. Whatโs moving peopleโs lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are people excited about? Itโs a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isnโt even an ideal that anybodyโs fighting for.
Joseph Campbell