myth creation Quotes

writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other.

Historical mythmaking is made possible only by forgetting.

It doesn't matter what is true; it only matters what people believe is true... You are what the media define you to be. [Greenpeace] became a myth and a myth-generating machine.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

[M]yths are not invented as stories are. Myths are inspired-they really are. They come from the same realm that dream comes from.

I did not break up the Beatles. You can't have it both ways. If you're going to blame me for breaking the Beatles up, you should be thankful that I made them into myth rather than a crumbling group.

The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created in the human mind.

I think Steve Bannon is much to-do about nothing. I think this is a guy who wants to create his own myth.

A fact which is not denied but whose truths are rationalized loses its objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth created in defense of the class of the perceiver.

We make up any excuse to preserve myths about people we love, but the reverse is also true; if we dislike an individual we adamantly resist changing our opinion, even when somebody offers proof of his decency, because it's vital to have myths about both the gods and devils in our lives.

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.

There was a real conflation of hero and victim in the wake of 9/11, in our perverse desire to create a triumphant myth out of pure tragedy.

As for the "anger" of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment.

If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.

The idea of good and evil is a myth created by the politicians, the priests, and all those who have an interest to keep it at their mercy.

Studio press agents make up anything they want to, and reporters go along with it. One flack created the legend that I had been blown up in an air crash during the war, and my face had to be put back together by way of plastic surgery. If it is a 'bionic face,' why didn't they do a better job of it?

The important thing is to make a different world, to make a world that is not now. A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live. The myth is everything.

Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait.

It's only recently that I've come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all our thinking for us, that we are writing myths and our myths are believed, and that old myths are believed until someone writes a new one.

Memory depends mainly upon myth. Some even occurs in our minds, in actuality or in fantasy; we form it in memory, molding it like clay day after day - and soon we have made out of that event a myth. We then keep the myth in memory as a guide to future similar situations.

I think that obviously humans find it very difficult to believe that there is no there there. So they created these stories and myths to give their lives some meaning.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

My mission was always intended to be slightly outside the public eye, because that makes me appear more interesting than I really am. A lot of people don't realise that merely by staying away, you can create a myth.