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Quote by Joseph Boyden

“Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasn't a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and that's why he let me be taken away. I've thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.”

Quote by Joseph Boyden

Work

Through Black Spruce

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Author

Joseph Boyden
Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist known for his profound insights and critical perspective on Indigenous culture. His works often focus on the history, identity, and conflicts of Indigenous peoples in Canada. more

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“Feel compassion for your own heart that was broken open by grief or confusion. Then tune in to the other level of that experience. Some part of you was heroic inside that moment of your life. Some part of you was looking out for you, wanting you to make it through, encouraging you to love and heal and be larger than the message you were getting. Access the hero inside your own story....”

“The story of John Ritter illustrates what it means to be a hero and how we treat our heroes. When we idealize real people they lose their humanity. They are turned into idols that we worship and may later want to destroy. Heroes are transformed from conscious-feeling fellow homo sapiens into characters in our stories. The greatest hero-characters will become legends or even mythic characters. We might think we know them, but when they are idolized they become more like treasured memories, existing in our minds as archetypal characters, rather than living-breathing human beings with thoughts and feelings of their own.”