Actually I believe the quote was more along the lines of, "He survived by some divine prank..." That may not be the exact wording but I know that it had the words 'divine prank' in it.
Getting off topic here though, but honestly I think Ganon does have some role in the destiny that the...
I hate to say this but no, Link is not the same Hero of Time throughout all of the games. The only ones that have actually stated that Link is the HoT is OoT and MM. Other than that, no other one has. In WW, he was called the 'Hero of Winds' and in TP he is called the 'Hero chosen by the Gods'...
I believe that I've heard someone say that in SNES version of ALttP one time. I'm not sure who it was though but I think that it was Sahalrasha who told you that. I don't have a quote at the moment to show you what I'm referring to though. Sorry.
Anyways getting back to the topic of the...