The Great Stories
Forward is the only way on
The journey of two friends is a majestic thing. Together by choice, refusing to wither in the face of challenge. These are mythic qualities.
“...But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folks seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on — and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end...” — The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter 8: “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”
Adapted by Peter Jackson as:
“It’s like in the great stories, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? … But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
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“May your seas be wide enough for wonder, your harbor always waiting, and your light never fail when another soul is searching.” – The Lantern Keeper