Mythology is what grown-ups believe, folklore is what they tell the children, and religion is both.

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

The South is one of those kingdoms of the mind, like India or Scotland, that are neat and understandable only to people who have never been there.

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.

The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest- but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

When myth meets myth, the collision is very real.