Peter S. Beagle Quotations

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships.

Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard's castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts...

He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight.

What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?

Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.

I am infected with life and will die of it in time.

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.

This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he’s none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind’s right he has his uses. Never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka’s mystery even to the Pooka.

I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art — not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course.

Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.

Unicorns are not to be forgiven." The magician felt himself growing giddy with jealousy, not only of the touch but of something like a secret that was moving between Molly and the unicorn. "Unicorns are for beginnings," he said, "for innocence and purity, for newness. Unicorns are for young girls." Molly was stroking the unicorn's throat as timidly as though she were blind. She dried her grimy tears on the white mane. "You don't know much about unicorns," she said.

Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?

Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, "I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.

Her face was a stranger’s face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to.

The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near... She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was, shivering with the desire to go to her"...[later, Molly asked the cat] "Why were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her." "If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will... The price is more than a cat can pay.

He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

I fear it, for her sake. It would mean that she too is a wanderer now, and that is a fate for human beings, not for unicorns. But I hope, of course I hope.

Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.

But I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished." -the Lady Amalthea, from The Last Unicorn

What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain-- What is gone is gone.

It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space--that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.

For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.

Wisdom is finding joy in bewilderment

The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.

What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. "Always, always," it sighed, "faithful beyond any man's deserving. I will keep the color of your eyes when no other in the world remembers your name. There is no immortality but a tree's love.

...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.

I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters.

The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said.

But what I thought, and what I still think, and always will, is that she saw me. Nobody else has ever seen me — me, Jenny Gluckstein — like that. Not my parents, not Julian, not even Meena. Love is one thing — recognition is something else.

Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe, Sooner than I will live with you. Fish will come walking out of the sea, Sooner than you will come back to me.

How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns(....) But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else — what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?

The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.

But I must go on," said the Lady Amalthea, "for it is never finished. Even when I wake, I cannot tell what is real, and what I am dreaming as I move and speak and eat my dinner. I remember what cannot have happened, and forget something that is happening to me know. People look at me as though I should know them, and I do know them in the dream, and always the fire draws me nearer, though I am awake—

Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it.

There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous.

Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.

I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.

No," he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice... whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give.

The magician was studying her face with his green eyes. "Your face is wet," he said worriedly. "I hope that's spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world — oh, it must be spray. Come with me. It had better be spray.

Then what is magic for?" Prince Lír demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling. Schmedrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for.

...no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.

Haggard, I would not be you for all the world," he declared. "You have let your doom in by the front door, although it will not depart that way. (...) Farewell, poor Haggard, farewell!

If a man loved me, I would have talked myself into loving him, and I would have loved him very deeply after a while.

Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.

You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.

What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished.

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves -- for they are a little vain, knowing themselves to be the most beautiful.

You ever want to see real witchcraft, you watch people protecting their comfort, their beliefs.

Avicenna California...Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.

There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.

A Clock is not time; it's numbers and springs. Pay it no mind.

They know these mornings well and love them desperately because they cannot last - these people who know that nothing lasts.

Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it.

I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business.

...no place is more enchanted than where a unicorn has been born.

..no meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things...Things must happen when it is time for them to happen.

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left.

The Unicorn Sonata ... tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes - and our ears - to find it.

I am afraid! It is not starving I fear, or talking to people, or even being alone. But I cannot bear to be useless and ineffectual. There must be some meaning to me, if not to my life; there must surely be some purpose that has my name written on it. If this is not so, if I am deceiving myself about this too, then why should I want to become real? What reason have I to live anywhere?

Ah. My story. Are you certain you wish to hear it? It is long, unlikely, and remarkably unedifying -- shameful, even, to come from a minister's lips. Blasphemous, too, properly regarded.

Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.

there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.

She said, "I will go no farther." "There is no choice. We can only go on." The magician said again. "We can only go on.

If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them - but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.

Farewell,' she said. 'I hope you hear many more songs' - which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.

Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)

How's the Angel of Death supposed to do his job with clipped wings?

Lir said, "It is my right. A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last." But Schmendrick answered, "This is not the end, either for you or for her.

- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.

The woman I loved died because I did not love her enough - what greater sin is there than that?" (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Fifke and the Angel)

Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.

What use is wizardry if it cannot save a Unicorn?

But I still feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, 'alright sucker, now what?'

The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness.

Unicorn. Old French, unicorne. Latin, unicornis. Literally, one-horned: unus, one and cornu,a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn.

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.

Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose-- What is gone is gone.

All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry. By being ourselves, squirrel and raven, we fulfill the first requirement, you in flight and I in my tree. But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain—this is nothing beside a life without poetry.

As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.

Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.

The last unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.

I'll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, 'The soul selects her own society.' I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, 'Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.

Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.

It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

I am a king's daughter, And if I cared to care, The moon that has no mistress Would flutter in my hair. No one dares to cherish What I choose to crave. Never have I hungered, For that I did not have I am a kings daughter, And I grow old within The prison of my person, The shackles of my skin. And I would run away And beg from door to door, Just to see your shadow Once, and never more.

...because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far.

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.

And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?

A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful.

song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone.

Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.