From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders, on wandering, on exile, on encounters beyond the familiar. The stranger is an archetype in epic poetry, in novels. The tension between alienation and assimilation has always been a basic theme.

Related Quotes

I am five, I will never understand
why we are stranded in our selves
but in this moment I know
my own story
is understanding our singleness
that I am destined to move my body and time
into the body-time
the story
of Others.

— Sharon Doubiago

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

— Lascelles Abercrombie

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I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
of human cities torture.

— George Gordon Byron

classicsepic-poetrypoetry

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

— Robert Staughton Lynd

With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

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