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"Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome."
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"There are those who hold first rankers and there are those who are heroes."

"People love super heroes. It's true we're impressed by their bravery and fortitude, their supernatural gifts and physical brawn. But the fact is, villains possess these same qualities. So why our admiration for the hero and not the nemesis? Because of virtue. A super hero gives everything to defend what's good and right without seeking praise or reward. Think about it. All the great heroes give without taking, help without grumbling, sacrifice without asking recompense. A super hero's real strength, what we absolutely fall in love with, is his finer virtue."

"In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business-and I wanted to try to reflect that."

"The most powerful and courageous heroes I know are those who bite their tongues when justification, validation, temptation, or vengeance would have them strike with truthful, hurtful words."

"I'm just a kid, Chiron," I said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?"Chiron managed a smile. '"What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."

"Sometimes a hero is unbelievably good for so many but terribly bad for someone else."
Explore more quotes by Margaret Atwood

"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard."

"Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I'm in better shape than they are."

"I shouldn't have taken a vow of silence, I told myself. What did I want? Nothing much. Just a memorial. But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge."

"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist."

"After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken."

"The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'"
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