Roberto Calasso > Quotes

“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

“Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.”
― Roberto Calasso, Literature and the Gods

“The gods are fugitive guests of literature. ”
― Roberto Calasso