
The priest presents for consideration a compound of inherited forms with the expectation (or at times, even the requirement) that one should interpret and experience them in a certain authorized way, whereas the artist first has an experience of his own, which he then seeks to interpret and communicate through effective forms. Not the forms first and then the experience, but the experience first and then the forms.
-- Joseph Campbell
The Mythic Dimension (p. 226-227)
Find more quotations at www.jcf.org/quotes

The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays, 1959–1987
These twelve essays explore the topic for which Campbell was best known: the many connections between myth and history, psychology, and everyday life. Drawing from such varied sources as Thomas Mann, the occult, Jungian and Freudian theory, and the Grateful Dead, these dynamic writings elucidate the many ways in which myth touches our lives, our psyches, and our relationship to the world.