Jean Houston Quotes

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.

(I am) dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times.

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

Jack’s life had more to do with myth, legend, saga, and story than with political theory or political science.

The myth holds us, therefore, not through its romantic flavor, not the remembrance of beauty of some bygone age, not through the possibilities of fantasy, but because it expresses to us something real and existing in ourselves, as it was to those who first stumbled upon the symbols to give them life.

I love stories, I love myths, I love fairytales, I love Kafka.

Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words.

At the centre of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power

A tale in everything.

Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

Myth is nothing more than ancient gossip.

They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

A wonder tale can be truer than true," I said. I had learned (...) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.

Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.

Nature, or the world, or reality, is what mythology is all about.

Myth is the nothing that is all.

It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night.

Even when the facts are available, most people seem to prefer the legend, and refuse to believe the truth when it in any way dislodges the myth.