#epic

Your primary presumption that The Bridge was proffered as an epic has no substantial foundation. You know quite well that I doubt that our present stage of cultural development is so ordered yet as to provide the means or method for such an organic manifestation as that. ↗

— Hart Crane

#cultural #development #doubt #epic #foundation

I am fond of depicting the lives of young folks for one thing, and if you have parts for girls or young men, you must absolutely have young people to fill them - that is generally acknowledged now. ↗

— D. W. Griffith

#acknowledged #am #depicting #fill #folks

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#complete #contain #contains #development #drama

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. ↗

— William Ralph Inge

#animal #badly #beyond #cousins #creation

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past. ↗

— Lion Feuchtwanger

#glorifying #goes #past #short #step

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men? But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it. This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up? And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me. ↗

— N.K. Jemisin

#history #tolkien #writing-while-black #freedom

My specialties are corpses, unconscious people and people snoring in spectacular epics. ↗

— Gig Young

#epics #people #snoring #specialties #spectacular

There was love, a reliable and real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristan did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristan's both endangering and saving Crissand's life. It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner...and that was that....They were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that. ↗

— C.J. Cherryh

#fantasy-fiction #friendship #love #friendship

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#epic #epic poetry #fall #poetry #species

Confidence don't mean jack shit in the real world, sis," she once said. I feel myself finding the courage to trust those words more and more with every twist of the knife. Coincidentally, last Tuesday afternoon I was involuntarily exposed to the punch line of an old wise tale that goes something like: "There's beauty that can be found in everything." But why can't the insensitive cunt who said that ever find the courage to look in the mirror? Because poopycock, one might say. ↗

— Dave Matthes

#death #epic #hate #love #man