Roberto Calasso Quotes

• We establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself.

  Roberto Calasso

  Sacrifice, Giving, Connections

  "Roberto Calasso speaks on 'The Last Superstition'". The Paris Review interview, bookhaven.stanford.edu.

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• Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.

  Roberto Calasso

  Tree, Stories, Branches

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• Education is paradoxical in that it is largely composed of things that cannot be learned

  Roberto Calasso

  Inspirational, Paradoxical

  Roberto Calasso, William Weaver, Stephen Sartarelli (1994). “The Ruin of Kasch”, p.48, Harvard University Press

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• Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.

  Roberto Calasso

  Stories, Branches

  Roberto Calasso (1993). “The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.

  Roberto Calasso

  Might, Alive, Divine

  Roberto Calasso (2010). “Literature and the Gods”, p.34, Vintage

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• The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.

  Roberto Calasso

  Father, Hero, Men

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• The gods are fugitive guests of literature.

  Roberto Calasso

  Literature, Guests, Fugitive

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• Wendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy.

  Roberto Calasso

  Sexy, Lying, Identity

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• The author is the successor of the saint, everyone respects the author.

  Roberto Calasso

  Saint, Successors

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