c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It was an amazing garden like nothing Will had ever seen. Everything was covered in snow and glittering ice, the winding paths, the clusters of trees and what looked like mazes. And here and there blue fountains splashed and a river meandered between them, though the water didn’t look like water at all but like a stream of sapphires. And strangest of all was how see-through everything looked, trees showing through trees, the river showing through heaps of snow. It was all like a daydream, half imagination, half reality. But Will knew that it was real.
— Tal Boldo
But you must be awash in a sea of compliments, my lady. Every gentleman you meet must voice his admiration, his wish to make love to you. And those are only the ones who may voice such thoughts. All about you are men who cannot speak their admiration, who must remain mute from lack of social standing or fear of offending you. Only their thoughts light the air about you, following you like a trail of perfume, heady but invisible. (Winter Makepeace)
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
Shhh.” He put a finger to her lips. “Hear me out. I cannot deny that I would've liked to have made babies with you. A little girl with your hair and eyes would've been the delight of my life. But it is you that I want primarily, not mythical children. I can survive the loss of something I've never had. I cannot survive losing you. (Winter Makepeace)
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
He shoved his hips against her, reminding her of what they had just done, and said, “I had never bedded a woman before you. I made that plain. Did you think I let you seduce me lightly? No, I did not. You made a deal with me the moment you gave me entry into your body.”“I made no such deal!” Her eyes were angry—and frightened—but he would not let her make him back down.“Precious Isabel,” he whispered. “You made a deal with your heart, your soul, and your body, and you sealed it with the wash of your climax on my c*ck.”She blinked, looking dazed. He’d never used such words before, especially not with her, but their bluntness was necessary.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
I would do violence for one glimpse of your naked breasts. Bleed for one taste of your nipple on my tongue. (Winter Makepeace)
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
I love you,” he whispered as he thrust again. And again. Each movement controlled. Each small movement devastating in its effect. “I love you.”She lost all concept of time. She lost her place and surroundings. She couldn’t remember who he was—who she was. She lost her mind.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
There was no sound, but she felt a movement, a shifting of the air in her room, the warmth of another presence.Isabel opened her eyes. He was there, at the foot of her bed, a single candle in his hand, dressed only in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and breeches.“Forgive me,” he whispered as he set the candle down. “I could not stay away.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
She threw one leg over his and straddled his lap, then reached under herself and found him again.He tore his mouth from hers. “Wait.”“No.” She looked him frankly in the eyes. “I don’t care if you spill at once. I need you inside me now.”His beautiful eyes widened and then narrowed. “You’ll not always hold the reins, my lady.”She smiled sweetly. “Naturally not, but I do now.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Thief of Shadows
From above you could see the chaos of entangled plots on the other side of the road, and a couple of tough tethered goats, and the glint of a frozen pond somewhere in the trees. Above them the sun was shining vaguely through the milky November sky, old but strong. In April – between the thaw and the jungly green explosion of summer – or in raw mid-October, I bet the same view would have been barren and depressing. But when we stood there all the bits of old tractors and discarded refrigerators, the shoals of empty vodka bottles and dead animals that tend to litter the Russian countryside were invisible, smothered by the annual oblivion of the snow. The snow let you forget the scars and blemishes, like temporary amnesia for a bad conscience.
— A.D. Miller
And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.
— Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian
They're Lares. House gods.""House gods," Percy said. "Like...smaller than real gods, but larger than apartment gods?
— Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
I wasn't aiming at the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.
— Tom Robbins
But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?
— Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars
Charm me into giving you the red M&Ms. They’re my favorite.'I looked Hades in the eyes. 'Give me the red M&Ms.''Still not good enough.''Give me the damn M&Ms,"'I snapped.He snickered. 'That wasn’t very charming.
— Kaitlin Bevis, Persephone
Time, which sees all things, has found you out.
— Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack, 'cause you're a major mythological figure...but now you've just gone nuts!
— Mike Mignola, Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil
Aphrodite: Pfft. That's not the point. Follow your heart.Percy: But... I don't know where it's going. My heart, I mean.
— Rick Riordan
Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!
— Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters
The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.
— Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories
THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayersstopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witnessthe unbelievable: for there before him stoodthe legendary creature, startling white, thathad approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced abody wrought of finest ivory. And ashe moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the signof his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, whenopened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly:he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure,reflecting vistas and events long vanished,and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Even Cronus, the Titan who literally had his kids for breakfast, would find these facts hard to swallow.
— Tai, Cupid's Academy: Argus' Big Fat Greek Wedding Ring
What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.
— Joseph Campbell
The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.
— Phil Cousineau
When they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was -- gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.
— C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
Myths have a very long memory.
— Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia
The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart, that like Hamlet, or like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false finally unjustified image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world--not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning, because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself, but of the nature of both Man and the Cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life-ignorance by affecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will, and this is affected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.
— Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
We hold this myth to be potentialNot self-evident but equationalAnother DimensionOf another kind of Living Life
— Sun Ra
But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.
— William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.
— Chaim Potok, Davita's Harp
If she could explore and heal his injuries with her fingers, it would be another type of magic, her skin making contact with his. Putting her mind to it, Love would become familiar with his body. She would know him from top to bottom, from beginning to end. Touching this boy would be the death, and life, of her.
— Natalia Jaster, Touch
They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)
— Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Sky was the first god. Robert knew that there was only one God and he had a Son who was also God, but there were gods who had vanished: the gods of thunder, of fire, of the wide oceans of the earth.
— Arthur Slade, Dust
Pegasus's dad was poseidon, the god of the sea, and his mom was Medusa, and evil Gorgon who had fangs and lizard skin and living snakes for hair. And you thought your family was weird.
— Evan Kuhlman, The Last Invisible Boy
This coming from the god who zinged Guinevere and Lancelot while King Arthur was away slaying dragons.
— Tai, Cupid's Academy: Argus' Big Fat Greek Wedding Ring
Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.
— Assotto Saint
Standing at the window, reading the menu of Obediah's services, the Minotaur wishes he could believe in what she has to offer: a promise woven into deep lines of his palm, some turn of fate told by a card. But faith is a nebulous thing and charlatans a dime a dozen; it's always been that way. The Minotaur both envies and pities the devout.
— Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
We came upon a massacre at the Shrine of Prometheus. The humans were ripped to shreds. There was no one ieft alive to say what happened, said Eros.
— Wynn Mercere, City of the Gods: Forgotten
Instantly, the pair fell to groping one other as if each had puff the magic dragon at a rock concert in Woodstock.
— Tai, Cupid's Academy: The Miseducation of Mergatroyd, Love god in Training
I do tasks for the gods, usually things like tracking down rare items or taking someone safely to a destination."D'Molay the Freeman Tracker
— M. Scott Verne, City of the Gods: Forgotten
As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection.
— Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins
From The Ghost Wars- on the concept of the Torah as ancient science fiction. “Take the story of the fall of the tower of Babel. Let’s say this represents not an act of God, nor a metaphor for this planet’s diverse linguistic heritage; but a catastrophic act of terrorism by the Divisionists to sever mankind from the neural net. The internet in this situation becomes mankind’s attempt to build a physical replacement for a natural ability long lost. Think of it as a wooden leg or a pacemaker.
— Cole J. Davis
Her uneasy gaze skittered along the length of his arms, which were exposed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves... and stopped at the astonishing sight of a design that had been inked onto his right forearm. It was a small black horse with wings. Noticing her mesmerized stare, Rohan lowered his arm to give her a better view. "An Irish symbol," he murmured. "A nightmare horse, called a pooka."The absurd-sounding word brought a faint smile to Daisy's lips. "Does it wash off?" she asked hesitantly.He shook his head, his lashes half lowering over his remarkable eyes."Is a pooka like the Pegasus of the Greek myths?" Daisy asked, flattening herself as close to the wall as possible.Rohan glanced down her body, taking a kind of leisurely inventory that no man ever had before. "No. He's far more dangerous. He has eyes of yellow fire, a stride that clears mountains, and he speaks in a human voice as deep as a cave. At midnight, he may stop in front of your house and call out your name if he wants to take you for a ride. If you go with him, he'll fly you across earth and oceans... and if you ever return, your life will never be the same.
— Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter
Peleus acknowledged this. "Yet other boys will be envious that you have chosen such a one. What will you tell them?" "I will tell them nothing." The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. "It is not for them to say what I will do.
— Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
I believe she is Selene, goddess of the moon.""She looks so content.""You sound surprised.""Well," Callie said tentatively, "Selene is not the happiest of stories. After all, she is doomed to love a mortal in eternal sleep."St. John turned at her words, obviously impressed. "Her own fault. She should have known better than to ask favors of Zeus. That particular course of action never ends well.""A truth of which Selene was likely acutely aware upon receiving her favor. I assume that this statue depicts a happy Selene before Zeus meddled.""You forget," St. John said, a teasing gleam in his eye, "she and Endymion did have twenty children despite his somnolence, so she couldn't have been so very unhappy with her situation.""With due respect, my lord," Callie said, "bearing and raising twenty children alone does not sound like the happiest of circumstances. I hardly think she would appear so very rested were this a statue depicting her maternal bliss.
— Sarah MacLean, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Those movies... ridiculously inaccurate. The real gods of Asgard — Thor, Loki, Odin, and the rest — are much more powerful, much more terrifying than anything Hollywood could concoct.
— Rick Riordan, The Sword of Summer
Find the Seventh Sister,And the girl shall be,Your spiritual guardian,For eternity.
— Andrew J. Peters, The Seventh Pleiade
Excercise is nothing more than a depressing reminder that one is not a god.
— Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die.Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now.
— Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
Myths are different than fairy tales or legends. Legends are stories based in history and are more or less true. Myths, on the other hand, are stories containing a deeper truth—stories that transcend time. If you were to travel the world, you would find myths that are remarkably similar to one another—stories of heroes fighting the darkness with the light.
— Seth Adam Smith, Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern
When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’re standing up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. What makes him worthy of that role is his integrity, as a representative of the principles of that role, and not some group of prejudices of his own. So what you’re standing up to is a mythological character. I imagine some kings and queens are the most stupid, absurd, banal people you could run into, probably interested only in horses and women, you know. But you’re not responding to them as personalities, you’re responding to them in their mythological roles. When someone becomes a judge, or President of the United States, the man is no longer that man, he’s the representative of an eternal office; he has to sacrifice his personal desires and even life possibilities to the role that he now signifies.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos. - Muzwot
— Muzwot
The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos.
— Muzwot
The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.
— René Girard
The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to the mimetic contagion of victimization.
— René Girard
Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.
— René Girard
If the Gospels were mythical themselves, they could not provide the knowledge that demythologizes mythology.
— René Girard
In Muspell, at the edge of the flame, where the mist burns into light, where the land ends, stood Surtr, who existed before the gods. He stands there now...It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station. He will go forth from Muspell with his flaming sword and burn the world with fire, and one by one the gods will fall before him.
— Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
Morrigan moved across the room as if she were floating. “I will acknowledge your anger, Aerric, but only for a moment. The others will lead the charge against the fledglings, but I want you to track Liam and report back to me directly. How many Sluagh did you take out today?”	I shook my head. “Five total, but with all due respect, Goddess, I am going to need a bit more of an explanation as to why the love of my life is lying here before me, alive and well, when she was supposed to have died two centuries ago.
— Brynn Myers, Entasy
Fear is a constant, and faith is a choice. Fear comes from karma, from faith arises dharma.
— Devdutt Pattanaik, Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana
You really should play with someone your own size, you know.
— Brynn Myers, Entasy
As the red-haired female watched, it was obvious she could not process what was happening. It was as though she had never seen anything magical; her fear had her locked in place, unable to move. 	In her reality, humans didn’t “feed” off of other humans, but the Sluagh were not human. They were demons and ghosts that haunt and invade. They were your darkest fears. The nightmarish creatures were a part of folklore passed down from generation to generation. The Sluagh were in essence rejected by heaven and hell, existing in the human realm only to consume souls. Humans were blinded by the magic that existed in the world. They assumed fairytales were just someone’s wild imagination, creative tales told to delight and frighten children. It was this lack of acknowledgement that made humans the perfect prey for these outcasts.
— Brynn Myers, Entasy
I am gonna shock the crowd, you are just gonna wow them.
— Brynn Myers, Entasy
A lot of things have changed and will change, I can only wish you the best as it happens.Malice
— Courtney Winnie, The Demonic Trial
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Griffin asked me to take a chance. On him. On trust. On love. I did, and look where it got me. That my misery is my own damn fault doesn’t escape me. It just makes it worse.
— Amanda Bouchet, Breath of Fire
The door opens, and I turn my head, my heart thudding at the sight of Griffin. Tall, broad, muscular but sleek, he stalks into the room like a predator, his gait balanced and sure, his glittering, gray eyes focused entirely on me. Inky hair, a hawkish nose, that stubborn jaw, and thick, black stubble make him look hard and intimidating. With his sword strapped on and his dark brows lowered, he’s a warlord on the prowl.	I shiver. I couldn’t want him more.
— Amanda Bouchet, Breath of Fire
Harpies, n. A disease transmitted to humans by birds with human faces.
— Ron Brackin
Have I cheated death again? Hades must be allergic to me.
— Amanda Bouchet, A Promise of Fire
Solving crimes is like following a spider web. Everything is connected in some way. It's just figuring out where things intersect so I can find the spider in the middle.
— Lisa Kessler, Lure of Obsession
The daughter of Sin was determined to goTo the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla's god, To the house which those who enter cannot leave, On the road where travelling is one-way only, To the house where those who enter are deprived of light, Where dust is their food, clay their bread. They see no light, they dwell in darkness,They are clothed like birds, with feathers.
— Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
Sometimes, you can see more than me, but you pretend to know less so that I don’t feel intimidated by you. I do the same for you. We do not feel superior when the other is vulnerable; or inferior when we feel helpless. This is what sustains our relationship.
— Devdutt Pattanaik, My Gita
You’re just doing what you gotta do,” Sam assured me. “You can’t leave here, and you can’t have them worried. It’s not like you can say, “Hey, Mom and Dad, I was struck by lightning and now I’m a Valkyrie! Oh, and Odin’s my real dad, and the Norns are out to get me, but have no fear because my boyfriend is a wolf!
— Amanda  Carlson, Freed
Your reign of terror will soon be over,” he stated confidently.
— Amanda  Carlson, Freed
I’d gone from living alone in New York as a lowly shoe clerk to becoming a shieldmaiden with a family to come home to. It didn’t get much better than that.
— Amanda  Carlson, Freed
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
— Roland Burrage Dixon, Oceanic Mythology
Mental discipline, prayer and remoteness from the world and its disturbing visions reduce temptation to a minimum, but they can never entirely abolish it. In medieval traditions, abbeys and convents were always considered to be expugnable centres of revolt against infernal dominion on earth. They became, accordingly, special targets. Satan, issuing orders at nightfall to his foul precurrers, was rumoured to dispatch to capital cities only one junior fiend. This solitary demon, the legend continues, sleeps at his post. There is no work for him; the battle was long ago won. But monasteries, those scattered danger points, become the chief objectives of nocturnal flight; the sky fills with the beat of sable wings as phalanx after phalanx streams to the attack, and the darkness crepitates with the splintering of a myriad lances against the masonry of asceticism.
— Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence
I sort of fell.""Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
My two greatest loves were, of course, Daphne and Hyacinthus, but when you're a god as popular as 
— Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
There is a small wooden viewing tower, and pamphlets from the State of Ohio, but they focus on facts—for instance, the Serpent Mound is as long as four football fields—not on meaning. In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen, a Native poet, mythologist, and scholar, explains that Serpent Woman was one of the names of the quintessential original spirit “that pervades everything, that is capable of powerful song and radiant movement, and that moves in and out of the mind…she is both Mother and Father to all people and all creatures. She is the only creator of thought, and thought precedes creation.” In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.
— Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road
Every fact is a myth until proven to be otherwise.
— Sapan Saxena, Finders, Keepers
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
I chose to live in the Ether, to be starlight and legend....
— Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine
There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, ‘Who speaks for wolf?
— Mark Rowlands
Once again Love, that loosener of limbs,bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing,seizes me.
— Sappho
Mythology is Fan Fiction - for the Gods.
— Paul Kemner
But like I told you guys years ago: this demigod gig is dangerous. Don't say I didn't warn you.
— Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes
If the students were taught about shuttle flights, plate tectonics and submarine volcanoes, they were also immersed in the traditional myths of their culture—the ancient story, for example, of how the island of Pohnpei had been built under the direction of a mystical octopus, Lidakika. (I was fascinated by this, for it was the only cephalopod creation myth I had ever heard.
— Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin child’s head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered.
— A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok
Gawain laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sir Perceval, when the priest reads the lesson, he says that he who would save his life must lose it. Good words for any man, for there are moments when cowardice will bring death more surely than boldness. But the ordinary man knows, when he goes out to meet the wolf in his road, that he may yet come home in peace. Not so the knights of the Round Table. We win through one deadly peril only to face another. If we banish one evil, we must go on to the next and after that, to the next—until death meets us in the path. We yield up our bodies every day, not for glory and fortune but so that those weaker than ourselves may live. Do you understand?” “I do,” said Sir Perceval. “And I say that there is no nobler calling. I am content.” But then he thought of the Lady Blanchefleur kissing his brow on a night of fire and blood, and with a sudden ache of grief told himself that even a hundred years of peace would not be enough time to spend with her.
— Suzannah  Rowntree, Pendragon's Heir
The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty or terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time
— H. R. Ellis Davidson
Look out your window on a morning in spring, ten or twenty years hence, and perhaps you'll see me coming.
— Suzannah  Rowntree, Pendragon's Heir
Then on the River I saw the dream-built ship of the god Yoharneth-Lehai, whose great prow lifted grey into the air above the River of Silence. Her timbers were olden dreams dreamed long ago, and poets' fancies made her tall, straight masts, and her rigging was wrought out of the people's hopes. Upon her deck were rowers with dream-made oars, and the rowers were the people of men's fancies, and princes of old story and people who had died, and people who had never been.
— Lord Dunsany
I sometimes go to a mythical place called "workplace", where the doable is always unpassable as possible, especially when it pisses you off.
— Will Advise, Nothing is here...
The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty of terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time.
— H. R. Ellis Davidson
Some legends say that Hera's breast milk sprayed across the sky and created the Milky Way. I don't know. That seems like a whole lot of solar systems from just one squirt
— Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes
He is half of my soul,as the poets say.
— Madeline Miller The song of achilles
The man whirled, his hands still gripping the animal's skin, his face perfectly illuminated by the fire. He was half in shadow, and the shadow revealed him slowly. His left eye was covered by a black leather patch, and thin white scar raked his brow and the cheekbone below. The carried on, down the length of his neck, into the thick black beard, twisting under his collarbone and around his torso. They marred only the skin, I noted, for the muscles beneath were whole and strong, and the entire impression was one of great vitality and energy, strength unbridled. He looked nothing so much as a fallen god working at a trade."Hephaestus at the forge," I murmured, recalling my mythology....
— Deanna Raybourn, A Curious Beginning
micel walcan wolde we do from that daeg micel walcan in the great holt the brunnesweald but though we walced for wices months years though this holt becum ham to me for so long still we did not see efen a small part of it so great was this deop eald wud. so great was it that many things dwelt there what was not cnawan to man but only in tales and in dreams. wihts for sure the boar the wulf the fox efen the bera it was saed by sum made this holt their ham. col beorners and out laws was in here as they was in all wuds but deop deoper efen than this was the eald wihts what was in angland before menhere i is meanan the aelfs and the dweorgs and ents who is of the holt who is the treows them selfs. my grandfather he telt me he had seen an aelf at dusc one daeg he seen it flittan betweon stoccs of treows thynne it was and grene and its eages was great and blaec and had no loc of man in them. well he was blithe to lif after that for oft it is saed that to see an aelf is to die for they sceots their aelf straels at thu and aelfscot is a slow death
— Paul Kingsnorth
Our susceptibility to myth is a world danger. Because the application of science to human behaviour has come so late the myth is regarded as less dangerous than the bacillus. It is doubtful whether such a belief is justified.
— Goeffrey Pyke
She quickly interpreted him into her mythology but if, at first, he was a herbivorous lion, later he became a unicorn devouring raw meat.
— Angela Carter, Love
The love-goddess gestured to the fish of the lake below her and they gleefully gave up their scales to clothe her in a glimmering gown. The very ends of her toes dangled like cherries over the water as she drifted toward the beach. Even her pointed finger seemed a welcome sight. With a voice that sounded like the wind though roses, she whispered, ‘My boy . . .
— I. Wright, Godkin
Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
— The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Complete Works PergamonMedia
So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.
— Margaret Atwood, Penelopiad, The: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus
We all wrap ourselves in the mythology we want other people to see us in.
— Neil M. Hanson, Pilgrim Wheels: Reflections of a Cyclist Crossing America
He thought of the deep crevasses and windy caves of Underlay, and the stories of the creatures that dwelt there. Of course, he didn’t believe in them. He’d told them, because the handing on of an oral mythology was very important to a developing culture, but he didn’t believe in supernatural monsters. He shivered. He hoped they didn’t believe in him.
— Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People
There is at least one truth to every myth.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Why are you singing?” Daniel asked. “You’re just lying in the dirt and singing. That’s weird. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of scary monster.
— Amanda Hocking, Lullaby
The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T’ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That’s how I knew I was in the right section.
— Larissa Lai, Salt Fish Girl: A Novel
They rode through the quiet streets. The rain had stopped and an early morning mist fell around them under the streetlights. Victor remembered that his ancestors had believed this was a magical time when the gods walked the earth, Götterdämmerung, a time when men slept and divine creatures laid plans that ensnared or released them. He was not such a creature, no; he had to walk step by step on the hard earth beneath his feet and watch tragedies unfold, without shaping them. It was a disappointment to him.
— J.J. Brown, Vector a Modern Love Story
These superhero and mythical stories have, in many cases, replaced Biblical stories as vehicles for communal myths, but they are hardly any better than ancient magical adventures tinged with mythical archetypes and the decidedly unnuanced black-and-white struggle between good and evil.
— Gudjon Bergmann, More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
But you mark my words: I will be there when everything you love is destroyed. Everything you didn't even believe you would have.
— Ana Franco, Down the Wormhole
It's rather good to pretend to be normal with someone.
— Ana Franco, Down the Wormhole
Mythology does not interest me. Nor does history. But the possible overlap between history and mythology excites me immensely.
— Ashwin Sanghi
In Kolkata is a temple where the deity worshipped is Amitabh Bachchan. The daily aarti is performed to the chanting of the Amitabh Chaleesa. And people still ask, “Could our mythological heroes be based on actual people who once lived?
— Ashwin Sanghi
I looked at Vicki. My beautiful Vicki. My dream. My love. My life.
— Derek Ailes
Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony.Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic than Sinbad's haunts or Ariosto's vast geographies.For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.
— Jorge Luis Borges
Evil people can still keep promises. Many have done just that, girl, though they are usually not promises you ‘rational’ people wish them to keep.
— Tim Reed, Melody's Room
I happen to know that history is nothing but a spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.
— Joanne Harris
Hades does not have a runny nose. I know this. The entire Greek pantheon no doubt knows this. For some reason, my nose is unaware of this basic fact of mythology.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. True, the writer may have been alone also with Spenser's golden apples in the Faerie Queene, Proserpina's garden, glistening bright among the place's ashes and cinders, may have seen in his mind's eye, apple of his eye, the golden fruit of the Primavera, may have seen Paradise Lost, in the garden where Eve recalled Pomona and Proserpina. He was alone when he wrote and he was not alone then, all these voices sang, the same words, golden apples, different words in different places, an Irish castle, un unseen cottage, elastic-walled and grey round blind eyes.
— A.S. Byatt
Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book aside.
— Karen Armstrong
Mythology didn't cease to exist and be useful to Pagans when we gained digital watch technology.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
Behold, my children!" she said. "The instrument of my revenge. I will call it a scythe!"The Titans muttered among themselves: What is that for? Why is it curved? How do you spell scythe?
— Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
Helios thought he looked pretty hot, and he had an annoying habit of calling the sun his "chick magnet.
— Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
She watches him for hours. She wants to be the sheets that cover his toes. She wants to be the ceiling separating him from the sky: above him, the first thing he sees before and after dreams. She wants to be the open window letting in the light for him.
— Natalia Jaster, Touch
Looking is the nature of wisdom.
— Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship
— Scott Westerfeld, Pretties
He holds out a trembling hand and traces the shape of her arm, descending to her elbow. “You’re like mist,” he says. “You really don’t feel this?”Love shakes her head. “No.”But that’s not entirely true, because this illusion of a touch has turned her into a current, this human has reached down to her bones.Then his fingers curl right through her hip, and he lowers his voice. “How ’bout that?
— Natalia Jaster, Touch
The architecture of the Minotaur’s heart is ancient. Rough hewn and many chambered, his heart is a plodding laborious thing, built for churning through the millennia. But the blood it pumps—the blood it has pumped for five thousand years, the blood it will pump for the rest of his life—is nearly human blood. It carries with it, through his monster’s veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur’s world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it.
— Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
Everyone has a weakness. Even a demigod.
— Christina  Farley, Gilded
I had to break up with Medusa. I just got sick of buying mice for her hair. I should have ended it sooner, but you try looking into those eyes.
— Alex Bosworth, Chip Chip Chaw!
Mythology was littered with people who meddled in the affairs of elves and fairies and were never again heard from.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Artificial Gods
You’re the girl that I have been wanting. You’re the girl that I could see myself with forever. And most importantly, you’re the girl that I’ve fallen in love with.
— M.S. Watson, Frost
God lives and works in history. The outward mythology changes, the inward truth remains the same.
— Iris Murdoch, The Time of the Angels
Cecie keeps telling him she’d like to take him home some night, husband or no. The Minotaur waits hopefully. Husband or no.
— Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as a birthplace of Ram. But the exact location is a subject of dispute and political turmoil. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more structured, more homogenous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. What used to be once a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts have to intervene
— Devdutt Pattanaik
Can you please tell me who you people are?""Criminals. Offenders. Monsters. We've all been imprisoned in Tartarus for discretions committed against the gods of Olympus."~ Hope/Daedalus, The River Styx
— David Revilla, The River Styx