A Quote by Susan Sontag

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.

Susan Sontag

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Believed Confound Counter Experiences Felt Just Life Literature Makers Myths Offers Only Thought Writers

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Susan Sontag
American - Author
January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004

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.

Kurt Vonnegut

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.

Northrop Frye

I think of evolution as a myth, like the Norse myths, the Greek myths - anybody's myths. But it was created for a rational age.

Tom Wolfe

Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

Karl Popper

Sick in my soul I tried to face the ordeal of seeking forgiveness. From whom? What God, what Christ? They were myths I once believed and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.

John Fante

I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves.

Sam Keen

Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is.

Haruki Murakami

Perhaps the greatest myth being purveyed, is that myths are just myths.

Michael Tsarion

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.

Marlon Brando

The more real things get, the more like myths they become. There have always been myths, but the myths of earlier times were, Im convinced, bad ones, because they made people sick. So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

There is something feeble, and a little contemptible, about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought, and he therefore cannot carry his own reflection to any logical conclusion.

Bertrand Russell

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

Harold Bloom

If the equality of individuals and the dignity of man be myths, they are myths to which the republic is committed.

Howard Mumford Jones

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

Ray Bradbury

I'm always interested in debunking myths if they are untrue. But it's also important to identify myths and how they function, what value they may have.

Neal Ascherson

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Karl Popper

A Quote by Susan Sontag

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