“We must be willing to get rid ofthe life we’ve planned, so as to havethe life that is waiting for us.The old skin has to be shedbefore the new one can come.If we fix on the old, we get stuck.When we hang onto any form,we are in danger of putrefaction.Hell is life drying up.”

American writer and professor of literature

Joseph Campbell was an American writer and professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion, and his life dates are not given here. He is best known for exploring myth, story, and the human condition. His best-known book is The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949. In it, he sets out his idea of the archetypal hero’s journey across world mythologies, a pattern he called the monomyth. His writing ranges across broad questions of meaning, symbolism, and experience.