"Zimmer was the first person I ever heard speak about myths who spoke about them

the way I was thinking about them. That is to say, not as curiosities for a curiosity
cabinet, but as guides. He was the first I ever heard speak that way! I had already
discovered Coomarswamy's work for some four or five years before I met Zimmer.
When I did meet him I had already started The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and
was working on The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, so I was way into that world.

"Hearing Zimmer's lectures and the way in which these myths came out, not as
curiosities over there somewhere, but as models for understanding your own life –
this is what I had felt myths to be all this time. Of course, Jung had it, but not the way
Zimmer did. Zimmer was much more in myth than Jung was. Jung tends to put forms
on the myths with those archetypes: the Jungians kin of cookie-molded the thing.
None of that with Zimmer. I never knew anyone who had such a gift for interpreting a
symbolic image. You'd sit down at the table with him and bring up something – he'd
talk about the symbolism of onion soup. I heard him do it! I don't remember what it
was, but he went off on onion soup – oh God! This was a genius!"

I believe the two paragraphs above is the passage in question. Several pages later,
summing up what Zimmer had understood about myth, Campbell declares:"If you live
with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situtations.
They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the
myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth."

Zimmer foi a primeira pessoa que ouvia falar sobre mitos da mesma maneira que eu
pensava sobre eles. Ou seja, não como curiosidades de “quarto das maravilhas”,
mas como guias. Ele foi o primeiro que ouvi falar dessa maneira! Eu já havia
descoberto a obra de Coomarswamy por uns quatro ou cinco anos, antes de eu
conhecer Zimmer. Quando eu o conheci, já havia começado “O Herói de Mil Faces”,
e estava trabalhando no “The Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake”, então eu estava
entrando naquele mundo.
Escutara as palestras de Zimmer e a maneira com os mitos esses mitos surgiram,
não como curiosidades de algum lugar, mas como modelos para entender sua
própria vida — era isso que eu achava que os mitos eram, todo esse tempo. É claro,
Jung também pensava assim, mas não da mesma maneira que Zimmer. Zimmer
estava muito mais no mito do que Jung. Jung tendi a dar formas aos mitos com os
arquétipos: um tipo de forma de biscoito junguiano. Para ZImmer não era tão assim.
Eu nunca vi ninguém com tal talento para interpretar imagens simbólicas. Você
poderia sentar em uma mesa e trazer algo — ele poderia falar sobre o simbolismo
de uma sopa de cebola. Eu o escutei fazer isso. Eu não lembro exatamente o que
era, mas ele veio com essa de sopa de cebola — meu Deus! Aquilo foi genial!