The Storyteller (TV Series)

The Luck Child (1988)

John Hurt: The Storyteller

Photos 

Quotes 

• The Storyteller : Sometimes people are born lucky. You imagine if they open their hands there'd be a little piece of sunshine. A personal piece. It lights them up. Everyone loves these people, they're lit up.

  [blows out the candlelight in his hands] 

  The Storyteller : Cats sit on their laps.

  Storyteller's Dog : [looks up]  What?

  The Storyteller : It's luck, it's a gift, it's a blessing, and therefore can't be undone. This is also true of prophesies.

• The Storyteller : And it happened in a week with two Fridays that the cruel king heard of a prophesy. A child had been born reported his spies, a luck child. Poor as penance, rich as snow, the seventh son of a seventh son. Wise men prophesied this child would one day be king.

• The Storyteller : Each one who came the same story: the Griffin, please, for love, for justice, for fame, for fortune. But always in the end for the Griffin's supper.

• Ferryman : I dare not think it possible you found the answer, but then you did come back... No one has ever come back.

  Lucky : I have come back and I have the answer: the next passenger you have, give him your oar. Then your lot will be his, his freedom yours.

  Ferryman : So simple...

  [fights back tears] 

  Ferryman : so simple.

  The Storyteller : And for the first time in years, centuries, hope fires the ferryman. A smile is forming in his mind, a tiny smile growing, getting ready to be born...

• King : Come on, come on, come on, can't we go any faster?

  Ferryman : Oh, yes, sir, there is a way...

  [gestures for the king to take over the ore] 

  The Storyteller : Take it, he says, take it, take it... So if you come one day to a lake and there's an island and a ferry goes back and forth rowed by an old sad man, turn around. Griffins live there, you may never get off the boat. For the ferryman was once a wicked king who ignored a prophesy, whose heart was cruel. And nature, my dears, is a wize woman who pays us back, tit for tat.

• The Storyteller : A "boo" to the king!

  Storyteller's Dog : Boo!

  The Storyteller : And a hiss!

  Storyteller's Dog : Hiss!

• Storyteller's Dog : Terrible. That's a terrible story.

  The Storyteller : What?

  Storyteller's Dog : The baby died. What do you mean, what?

  The Storyteller : Who said the baby died? *I* didn't.