"Travel far enough, you meet yourself."

— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

"He made me love him without looking at me."

— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"Superman. It’s always been Superman and it always will be. A good Superman story is hard to find. They’re rare to the point that I can make a comprehensive list of them off the top of my head. But when one does come along… A good Batman story is entertaining and bad ass. And it makes you think “Batman is cool.” A good Green Lantern story is generally fraught with emotional peril but, at the end, you’ll wish you had a power ring. A good Superman story fills you with awe.
It’s the mythology of a sun god who wished he was a man because he saw something so great in us. It’s the story of a hero who could move whole worlds and see through stars and hear a whisper on the other side of the planet… who fell in love with a storyteller. It’s about a man and his dog.
Every single day, you can turn on the news and hear about something bad happening. People do terrible things to each other all the time. And, on the worst days, you might just sit down and get cynical, thinking thoughts like “maybe we are inherently evil. Maybe there’s just something wrong deep down in our hearts.”
And then there’s Superman. Looking down at the world with an unfathomable sadness. Waiting for us to join him in the sun. All the while, truly believing something only an impossible man could believe.
“If you knew how you are loved, not one of you would raise a hand in rage again.”
There’s a psychology to storytelling. It’s really quite simple. When presented with something light, we look for darkness. When presented with darkness, we look for the light. It gives a story depth. In a world without a Superman, we made one for our fiction. To guide us and make us feel brave. To let us hope.
You will believe a man can fly."

— a redditor talking about his favourite superheroe