Quotes & Sayings About Hero Quests

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. — Peter S. Beagle

He just . . . Nick just wanted to be special. He wanted to be Luke, with a destiny. He wanted to be Frodo, with a quest. He wanted to be an unlikely hero and do something that mattered, but there are no quests in the real world, where everything is much bigger and more tangled and complex than in the stories he loves. In the real world, small people don't get to be heroes, and Nick is the smallest person he knows. — Lisa Henry

I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. Heroes know about order, about happy endings -- heroes know that some things are better than others. — Peter S. Beagle

Myths of the heroes speak most eloquently of man's quest to choose life over death. — Dorothy Norman

Dead parents are gruesome, yes, but anyone who's anyone in children's literature has either been orphaned or abandoned; well-adjusted kids from stable two-parent homes don't go on hero quests. — Lynn Messina

Long before haunted houses existed, haunted woods circled the globe. Homer knew it. The Brothers Grimm knew it. In legend, all the great mythic quests of self-discovery begin with the hero entering a dark wood. Some journeys also end there. — Robert Dunbar