Epic Heroes Quotes

The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us.

The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?

It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.

One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.

I'm a sci-fi guy. But I like fantasy too.

The language of the heroic is something that has evolved over time.

How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?

'The Grace of Kings' was meant to read like a set of legends about characters who were bigger than life.

Gemmell's name guarantees a satisfying story and a thumping good read. I recommend all his heroic creations - 'Druss the axeman,' 'the Jerusalem man,' among others - but my favourite has to be 'Waylander': Clint Eastwood with a crossbow and the same 'Make my day, punk' attitude.