Quest Narrative Quotes

I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.

'The Searcher,' as the title suggests, is about someone in search of something, and I have always loved quest stories and so was drawn to writing one myself.

Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.

When I was growing up, I loved stories in which a girl sets out on a quest to rescue the prince instead of the other way around.

In all our pictures, we had an antagonist who becomes the good guy, and the underdog fulfills his quest.

People tend to think of the quest as a sort of fanciful or fantastical form, but actually, I think it's pretty realistic. I think that story of gathering allies to your side - recruiting your band of companions - actually matches the shape of most great careers, most great lives.

Gollum was so interesting to me because he's morally ambivalent, and I love the notion of a quest that is to lose something. Not to gain, but to get rid of something.

Epic stories, especially 'quest narratives' like 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey,' are brilliant structures for storytelling. The quest lends itself to episodic storytelling.