“[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories it takes seriously—the ones that are thought to be a key to its identity.”

“All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.”

“Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time. ”

“In those timeless years between infancy and, say, seven what is has always been: in that way children inhabit the realm of myth.”

“[A]nother thing about myths: they gather in and circumscribe their target audience. They make a collection into a collective.”

“Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word 'myth' only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.”

“That's the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to it's logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies.”