“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

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.