Roberto Calasso Quotes & Sayings

As the Greeks see it, elegance arises from excavation, from the cavity. — Roberto Calasso

Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive. — Roberto Calasso

Wendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy. — Roberto Calasso

Maybe I'm inclined to what Nietzsche called "impure thought," that is to say, a kind of thought where abstractions are so mixed with the facts of life that you can't disentangle them. I feel thought in general, and in particular what is unfortunately called "philosophy," should lead a sort of clandestine life for a while, just to renew itself. By clandestine I mean concealed in stories, in anecdotes, in numerous forms that are not the form of the treatise. Then thought can biologically renew itself, as it were. — Roberto Calasso

They had to stir the churn of the ocean, until the soma floated up, as butter floats from milk. And this task could not be undertaken in opposition to the Asuras, but only with their help. The pronouncement ran contrary to everything the Devas had previously thought. But in the end, what did they have to lose, given that their lives were so futile? Now they thought: Anything, so long as there be a trial, a risk, a task. — Roberto Calasso

The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give. — Roberto Calasso

ardor which is tapas; the name Indra — Roberto Calasso

Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches. — Roberto Calasso

The gods are fugitive guests of literature. — Roberto Calasso

We establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself. — Roberto Calasso

Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward. — Roberto Calasso

Baudelaire was far more than a great poet. He established the keyboard of a sensibility that still lives within us, if we are not total brutes. — Roberto Calasso

The author is the successor of the saint, everyone respects the author. — Roberto Calasso

Education is paradoxical in that it is largely composed of things that cannot be learned — Roberto Calasso