Every Human Society Possesses A Mythology Which

Myths, As Compared With Folk Tales, Are Usually In A Special Category Of Seriousness: They Are Believed To Have "really Happened,"or To Have Some Exceptional Significance In Explaining Certain Features Of Life, Such As Ritual. Again, Whereas Folk Tales Simply Interchange Motifs And Develop Variants, Myths Show An Odd Tendency To Stick Together And Build Up Bigger Structures. We Have Creation Myths, Fall And Flood Myths, Metamorphose And Dying-god Myths.

For The Serious Mediocre Writer Convention Makes Him Sound Like A Lot Of Other People; For The Popular Writer It Gives Him A Formula He Can Exploit; For The Serious Good Writer It Releases His Experiences Or Emotions From Himself And Incorporates Them Into Literature, Where They Belong.

The Bible Is Not Interested In Arguing, Because If You State A Thesis Of Belief You Have Already Stated It's Opposite; If You Say, I Believe In God, You Have Already Suggested The Possibility Of Not Believing In Him. [p.250]

This Story Of Loss And Regaining Of Identity Is, I Think, The Framework Of All Literature.

The Fact That Creative Powers Come From An Area Of The Mind That Seems To Be Independent Of The Conscious Will, And Often Emerge With A Good Deal Of Emotional Disturbance In Their Wake, Provides The Chief Analogy Between Prophecy And The Arts... Some People Pursue Wholeness And Integration, Others Get Smashed Up, And Fragments Are Rescued From The Smash Of An Intensity That The Wholeness And Integration People Do Not Reach.