touchstone quotations: Gary Shandling on Unintentional Metaphor

I was standing on the wrong side of the elephant.

Gary Shandling

On his first appearance as host of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and figuring out where to stand during an interview with San Diego Zoo's Joan Embery and an elephant
appearing on Tavis Smiley, PBS
February 3, 2009

Joseph Campbell on Interesting Times

I have read somewhere of an old Chinese curse: "May you be born in an interesting time." This is a very interesting time. There are no models for anything that is going on. It is a period of free fall into the future, and each has to make his or her own way. The old models are not working; the new have not yet appeared. In fact, it is we who are even now shaping of the new in the shaping of our interesting lives. And, that is the whole sense (in mythological terms) of the present challenge: we are the ancestors of an age to come, the unwitting generators of its supporting myths, the mythic models that will inspire its lives.

Joseph Campbell
1904 - 1987
Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Gary Shandling on Unintentional Metaphor