Marina Warner Quotes

The evergreen played an influential role in the spiritual life of early societies throughout the world. Archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that veneration of the tree dates from at least 4000 years before Christ … These pagan beliefs survive to this day embedded in religious rituals and myths as well as secular customs, legends and fairy tales

I always point out to my Passover guests that the Hebrews were not living in isolation. They were at the crossroads of several great, elaborate cultures with their own mythology and religion and art and architecture and cultural belief. In fact, so many of the mythologies of the world describe the same events, just from different points of view.

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.

Country, Religion, Family!

Architecture is a political art connecting our values to the ages.

Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me.

Information and inspiration are everywhere... history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.

Mythology is a vast body of knowledge that has not been tapped.

I love traditions. I mean, cultural ones.

Culture is the intersection of people and life itself. It's how we deal with life, love, death, birth, disappointment... all of that is expressed in culture.

I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history.

There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves.

Cultures, along with the religions that shape and nurture them, are value systems, sets of traditions and habits clustered around one or several languages, producing meaning: for the self, for the here and now, for the community, for life.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.

I loved all the world's mythologies.

My family is very traditional, Catholic.

Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them?

I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.

I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.

I am fascinated with religion or things that people believe in and question that. I think it's interesting.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws …

Protestant Christianity ... tutored the first generations of Americans. It provided what we today would call the value system of the society.

Culture is more important than politics.