I think of a myth as a story that helps you explain all the different pieces of your … - Lewis Hyde

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Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species.

Lewis Hyde

I think of a myth as a story that helps you explain all the different pieces of your life. In that broad sense, there is no way to live without mythology.

Thinking, Different, Stories, Broad, Story, Way

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Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during which they often starve themselves, socially, erotically, and, at last but not least, nutritionally, in order to let the grosser weeds die out, and make way for the growth of their inner garden.

Die, Garden, Growth, Like, Men, Weed

The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns towards him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum.

Abhors, Circles, Generosity, Greater, Moving, Social

Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.

Decentralized, Giving, Groups, Interconnected, Kind, Party

What is it about a work of art, even when it is bought and sold in the market, that makes us distinguish it from. . . pure commodities? A work of art is a gift, not a commodity. . . works of art exist simultaneously in two “economies”, a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift, there is no art.

Art, Commodity, Essentials, Exist, Pure, Two

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.

Artist, Bowl, Creating, Creation, Essentials, Gift