Quotes from James Hillman

the connection between psychology and literature, to suggest their interchangeability.

Drying releases the soul from personal subjectivism, and, as the moisture recedes, that vivacity once usurped by feeling can now pass over into imagination.

Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this "something" as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am.

Attention does for consciousness what our hands do for our bodies: it grabs hold of nature so that we can change it

Extraordinary people display calling most evidently…they are extraordinary because their calling comes through so clearly and they are so loyal to it. They serve as exemplars of calling and its strength, and also of keeping faith with its signals.

For the daimon surprises. It crosses my intentions with its interventions, sometimes with a little twinge of hesitation, sometimes with a quick crush on someone or something. These surprises feel small and irrational; you can brush them aside; yet they also convey a sense of importance, which can make you say afterward: "Fate.

You see, they had to convince us that the earth was dead because otherwise they could not begin their autopsy in earnest.

It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.

The elder who is eliminating what time has done to the face, what life has done to the face, is making a statement for others to see: This is the way to be a good old person - it is to defeat this body that is doing things to you. Because you haven't changed. Your body's changing.

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.

We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.

Fear is a huge thing for older people.

Calling can refer not only to ways of doing - meaning work - but also to ways of being.

We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.

We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning.

Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.

I tend to think that you fulfill your own destiny, whether you realize it or not.

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child's destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child.

Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path....This is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am.