Peter S. Beagle

“It was not her dream that chilled him, but that she did not weep as she told it. As a hero, he understood weeping women and knew how to make them stop crying--generally you killed something--but her calm terror confused and unmanned him, while the shape of her face crumbled the distant dignity he had been so pleased at maintaining. When he spoke again, his voice was young and stumbling.”

“The magic on you is only magic and will vanish a soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.”

“No," she said, answering his eyes. "I can never regret."[...]"I can sorrow," she offered gently, "but it's not the same thing.”

“Stories never end. We end.”

“I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better.”

“But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lír demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry — and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock." He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad."And all for nothing," he said. "I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero — I, sleepy Lír, my father's sport and shame — but I might as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her.”

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

“When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.”

“The Cat: When the wine drinks itself, when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time, only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull. There be a trick to it, of course.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The dead," he had said once, "need nothing from the living, and the living can give nothing to the dead." At twenty-two, it had sounded precocious; at thirty-four, it sounded mature, and this pleased Michael very much. He had liked being mature and reasonable. He disliked ritual and pomposity, routine and false emotion, rhetoric and sweeping gestures. Crowds made him nervous. Pageantry offended him. Essentially a romantic, he had put away the trappings of romance, although he had loved them deeply and never known.”

“There are people,' he said, 'who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don't do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It's born in you, whether you give or take, and that's the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it. We'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and there you are. Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place." He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough. "Ravens are pretty neurotic birds. We're closer to people than any other bird, and we're bound to them all our lives, but we don't have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard.”

“Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world.""She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world that came to Molly Grue.”

“Because that world's gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can't make that other one real again. It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don't know what they smelled like, what kind of sounds they made, or how big they really looked standing in the grass under all those fossil fern trees. Even the sunlight must have been different, and the wind. What can bones tell you about a kind of wind that doesn't blow anymore?”

“I love whom I love.”

“If he had even blinked, she would have been gone; but he did not blink, and he held her, as he had learned to hold griffins and chimeras motionless with his steady gaze. Her bare feet wounded him deeper than any tusk or riving talon ever had, but he was a true hero.”

“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.”

“He felt as if he had told a joke and they had missed the punchline and were leaning to him, wating for the kicker, the all-illuminating kicker that is found only in jokes; or as if someone had asked, "How you doing?" and the spring-and-strap arrangement in him had rusted and broken and he would never again be able to answer perfunctory questions the way other people did.”

“I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.... 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.”

“song of elli (old age)"What is plucked will grow again,What is slain lives on,What is stolen will remainWhat 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.”

“All around Molly there flowed and flowered a light as impossible as snow set afire, while thousands of cloven hooves sang by like cymbals. She stood very still, neither weeping nor laughing, for her joy was too great for her body to understand.”

“Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.”

“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?”

“But the Lady Amalthea and Prince Lir walked and spoke and sang together as blithely as though King Haggard's castle had become a green wood, wild and shadowy with spring. They climbed the crooked towers like hills, picnicked in stone meadows under a stone sky, and splashed up and down stairways that had softened and quickened into streams.”

“Outside, the night lay coiled in the street, cobra-cold and scaled with stars.”

“there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.”

“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.”

“The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.”

“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”

“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.”

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

“How terrible to be forgotten by the god that made you, even if you're just a room. How could you love something that could do that anytime?”

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

“It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don't know what they smelled like, what kind of sounds they made, or how big they really looked standing in the grass under all those fossil fern trees. Even the sunlight must have been different, and the wind. What can bones tell you about a kind of wind that doesn't blow anymore?”

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

“But I felt them...hungry shadows who knew my name, clawing at my mind and my soul to be let in - and if I let them in there would be nothing left of me but skin; nothing but a shadow inside, like themselves. (By Moonlight)”

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

“We give them different names, those nights lit only by fire and the moon, depending on the country and the calendar, but we know what they are. They call up the world that was before the Lord came down among us; the world where good and evil were not so certain, so fixed as they are today, where the known and the unheard-of could mingle as they chose...where truth had its doubts, do you see?(By Moonlight)”

“There is an old saying that there is no country as unhappy as one that need heroes."(King Pelles the Sure)”

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

“...and it's not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I know's what I know, and it don't include putting the world back the way it out to be. It's too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don't matter what our heritage was maybe meant for - your side got hold of it first, and you won long ago. No undoing that, Esau, I ain't fool enough to think otherwise. I'm still sorry for you, but I know your side's won, this side of the grave.”

“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)”

“Like that Chinese monkey trying to grab the moon in the water," Uncle Chaim said to me once. "That's me, a Chinese monkey."(Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel)”

“So you're an angel, fine, that's terrific. Now give me back my shadows. (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel)”

“I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.”

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

“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.”

“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.”