The gods are fugitive guests of literature.
Roberto CalassoRead
Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Myth encompasses multiple narratives and interpretations, much like a tree with various branches.
This quote highlights the complexity and richness of myth, suggesting that it cannot be reduced to a singular narrative. Instead, myths are like trees with numerous branches, representing the different stories, perspectives, and meanings that people derive from them, reflecting the diversity of human experience and understanding.
Themes
MythStoriesNarrativeBranchesInterpretation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about cultural myths, this quote can illustrate how different societies interpret their legends.
More from Roberto Calasso
All quotes βWe establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself.
Roberto CalassoRead
Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
Roberto CalassoRead
Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.
Roberto CalassoRead
The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.
Roberto CalassoRead
Similar quotes
I don't believe in naming clients to get press. I hated it when I was a couture client. If the dresses don't sell themselves, there is something wrong.
Carolina HerreraRead
Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
Umberto EcoRead
It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology
Noam ChomskyRead
For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.
Albert CamusRead
Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy." Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it. Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.
Arundhati RoyRead
We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.
Charles DickensRead