Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear … - René Girard

Mimetic theory explains the presence of disabilities and infirmities in a great many mythical stories. When there is no ground for making a victim of someone — because he isn't guilty of anything — people act as children do and make a scapegoat of someone who is physically unattractive, or who is an outsider. The number of outsiders in myths is quite extraordinary. And why are so many victims lame? My work is scientific because it tries to solve the puzzle constituted by these clues, to explain why outsiders, many of them handicapped, are made into victims and forcibly expelled from a community. The burden falls on anyone who doubts my theory to supply a better explanation, or else to adopt mine for want of a more satisfactory one.

Les représentations théâtrales, elles aussi, sont enracinées dans la violence collective et ce sont des espèces de rites, mais plus nettoyés encore de leur violence que les sacrifices animaux, et plus riches sur le rapport culturel, puisque ce sont toujours, au moins indirectement, des méditations sur l'origine du religieux et de la culture tout entière, des sources potentielles de savoir.

Markus Müller, “Interview with René Girard,” Anthropoetics 2, no. 1 (June 1996): 3–5. 2