Our notions of self-determination are, on the whole, something of a myth. We are governed almost exclusively by our own peculiar habits, which makes those who rail against them that much more remarkable.
Imagine how many women could excel in science if not for the pernicious myth that science and math are a man’s game. Likewise, fitness isn’t defined by the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the world.
For years, TransCanada has been selling the Keystone XL pipeline to Americans with all of the enthusiasm of a used car salesman – and using all of the same tricks. However, one myth is more egregious than all the rest: this pipeline will enhance America’s energy independence.
Having western, Russian or Iranian forces providing the ground defeat of Isis would certainly work militarily, but would be the least attractive option as it might help reinforce the Isis myth.
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
I, along with everybody else, had bought into the myth of Donald being a self-made man and being a brilliant developer. I had no idea that none of that was true because everybody acted like it was true.
Nothing I had written before ‘Mary Poppins’ had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life.
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
Why is there this myth? People say, ‘Oh, you are a style icon. You’re ‘French, French, French.’ It’s not true, you know; there are stylish people everywhere.
I don’t think that there is absolute freedom of the press. We operate under laws – against libel, for instance. The idea that there is some absolute press freedom is kind of a myth.
The Roswell incident, for instance, had over three hundred witnesses – some describing the bodies, some the craft, some the military procedures. Were they all perpetuating their own lives in a myth?
When it comes to modeling, I always feel like my body is a myth or a story that is told by other people, and no one knows what my body really looks like.
Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole.
Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.
I think horror or science fiction is another way of telling a modern myth – it’s like Ancient Greece; it’s like kids couldn’t wait for the next ‘Orpheus’ story, the next ‘Jason and the Argonauts.’
The image of entrepreneurship as the province of the unprivileged and un-entitled – the Horatio Alger, rags to riches myth – flies in the face of reality.
It struck me that what I’d heard about certain celebrities was true: they had It, whatever the hell It was. Star power isn’t a myth; it is tangible and forceful.
When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth.
It’s a myth that you’ll know the box office result of any film. I don’t think anybody can predict a film’s fate accurately, otherwise nobody would make unsuccessful or flop films.
I didn’t learn much about writing at Sarah Lawrence, but I learned a lot about the sources of poems – dreams, myth, history – from the really great teachers, Joseph Campbell, Charles Trinkhaus, Bert Loewenberg, and a young Australian anthropologist named Harry Hawthorne.
I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.
I would love to be on ‘Glee,’ thus furthering the myth that I’m a gay man.
It is a huge myth that our voices don’t matter, that our vote doesn’t count.
When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.
Love is a deception and a trap. Love is as big a myth that God sits with his flowing white beard in a throne and looks at us.
I wrote a novel called ‘Blonde,’ which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth – that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.
‘Sex and The City’ was made to correct the myth that if you were single at a certain age, you were a leper. Its four characters are heroes to a lot of women; they run around New York, or Gotham – but they have fancy shoes instead of capes.
I must say, I’ve been in the studio with Jay Z, dog… I thought the freestyle thing was a myth. But, bro!
There’s a myth that in Arab countries, they all like Palestinians. They don’t. On the contrary.
Ever since childhood, I’ve been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.
