touchstone quotations: Colum McCann on America

Everybody had a story to tell. The beautiful thing about America is that people are open and gracious and kind.

Colum McCann

Irish-born, Colum's observation while discussing his experience traveling across America with Stephen Colbert.

Source: The Colbert Report on facebook

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

Friday, August 16, 2013

Colum McCann on America