Ember: I am sorry you came here, Children of Earth. No one asked you to come. I am sorry that our world is not the paradise you were looking for. But it was not created for your entertainment. Fillory is not a theme park, for you and your friends to play dress-up in with swords and crowns.
Quentin: That's not why we came here, Ember.
Ember: Is it not? No, of course it is not. You came here to save us. You came here to be our king. But tell me something, Quentin. How could you hope to save us when you cannot even save yourself?
Princess Ashesa: Daras isn't a hero. That takes more than winning tournaments.
Seb: More even than rescuing one princess. It's rather a full-time pursuit. It might even take, say, a long bloody war with Wylandia.
Princess Ashesa: Do you really expect me to believe that Daras would start a war just so he can be a hero?
Seb: He wouldn't be starting it, to his way of thinking. But the seeds are already there: real intrigues, imagined insults... mistrust. All waiting to take root in his mind until he firmly believes that Wylandia struck first. You see, Daras is already a hero in many ways. He's seen the soul of it in his brother's stories, and in that, he sees himself. And why not? He's brave, strong, skilled in warlike pursuits and in no other. All he lacks to make his destiny complete is the one vital ingredient - need. If the need is not there, he will create it.
—A Time For Heroes, by Richard Parks
"I can read you like an open book. You wanted to play the hero, save the day, and you put everyone at risk in order to do so. It got Ayane killed."
